The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced this Friday the imposition of sanctions on eight financial entities based in Canada, which it holds responsible for facilitating the transfer of assets to and from Iran for businesses and "other illicit actors" associated with Tehran.
The sanctions, adopted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), affect several money exchange houses located in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia that, according to Washington, "provide asset exchange services and the possibility of transferring money from Iran to Canada" and vice versa.
Among the entities added to the U.S. 'black list' is Diverse Trade Inc, which operates under the trade name Million Exchange and, according to the Treasury, has facilitated the sending of "hundreds of thousands of dollars to addresses linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or other addresses related to terrorism".
U.S. authorities also accuse the company of having "laundered proceeds from drug trafficking using cash generated from the sale of drugs to buy digital assets that were then returned to the traffickers". Among the alleged clients of this network would be Canadian drug trafficker and former Olympic athlete Ryan Wedding.
The department headed by Scott Bessent has reiterated that it will continue to target the financial channels of the "Iranian regime anywhere in the world" and has criticized that the neighboring country acts as a "safe haven" for these structures.
"Canada cannot be a safe haven for illicit financial facilitators who provide services to evade sanctions imposed on the Iranian regime and its representatives," the Treasury emphasized when announcing the new measures.