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OFAC to Target Financial Institutions Acting as Iran Surrogates: Director

By Brian Orsak

The U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions arm is gearing up to blacklist financial institutions secretly acting on behalf of Iran in an effort to bypass economic prohibitions, the agency's director said Wednesday. "Iran is looking to purchase small, third-country banks, and we've been very active in trying to combat that, and it is turning to bank substitutes or surrogates, like trading companies and exchange houses, to be able to move large sums of money that an ordinary company would move through a bank," said Adam Szubin, the director of the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). American officials believe that...

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