Iran used Britain’s two largest banks to secretly move money around the world as part of a massive sanctions-busting scheme backed by Tehran’s intelligence services, according to a report published in the Financial Times.
Lloyds and Santander UK provided accounts to “front companies” in the UK that were secretly owned by a sanctioned Iranian petrochemical company located near Buckingham Palace, reports Financial Times.
State controlled Petrochemical Commercial Company (PCC) was part of a network that the US accuses of raising hundreds of millions of dollars for Iranian Quds Guardians of the Revolution and collaborating with Russian intelligence agencies to raise funds for Iranian proxy militias. Both PCC and its UK subsidiary PCC UK have been subject to US sanctions since November 2018.
Documents, emails and accounting records show that during this time the PCC UK unit continued to operate from an office in Grosvenor Gardens in Belgravia, using a complex network of virtual organizations in the UK and other countries, including China.
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