The United States Department of the Treasury has reported this Wednesday the imposition of sanctions on four Indian citizens and ten companies for their involvement in a "global maritime fraud" network that provides support to the Government of Iran.
The measure, processed through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), falls on three men and a woman, all of them of Indian origin: Ashwani Kumar Dhiman, Sumiel Kumar Sharma, Ishwinder Singh and Jaspreet Preeti Shahid.
According to the agency, Sharma and his wife, Shahid, would have "scammed, from their base in Chandigarh (India), maritime regulatory administrations in multiple jurisdictions in order to create false flag authorities and maritime classification societies".
The Treasury details in its note that "under the pretense of representing countries from nearly all continents, from Guyana to Eswatini and Laos, Sharma and Shahid have allowed the Iranian phantom fleet, including those vessels that operate on behalf of the Iranian Army and its allies, to evade the international restrictions that weigh on their operations".
In the same sanctions package, ten companies are included, eight based in India and the other two registered in Turkey and Singapore, which would have helped the couple to develop operations intended to enable ships punished by Washington to "evade international regulations designed to ensure crew safety and to protect against environmental damage".