Meiad Maleki, the former head of the Targeting Sanctions Office at the U.S. Treasury Department, said, referring to the U.S. prosecutors’ action to seize approximately $61 million in cryptocurrency obtained from the sale of sanctioned Iranian oil, part of which was transferred to networks linked to the IRGC, that the case shows that cryptocurrency has become one of the important routes for evading sanctions and transferring income from the Islamic Republic’s oil.

He added that the Islamic Republic’s economic pathways are being restricted one after another and cited Babak Zanjani as an example of this trend, whose economic activities have repeatedly been targeted by sanctions over the past year.