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In Crackdown on Sanctions Busters, US Officials Accuse Georgian Bank of Acting as Front for Iran

By Colby Adams

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday accused the owners of a Georgian bank and more than a dozen other individuals of secretly helping Iran and Syria skirt economic sanctions. Pourya Nayebi, Houshang Hosseinpour and Houshang Farsoudeh acquired a majority share in the financial institution in 2011 to help process the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars of transactions for at least four Iran-based banks included on U.S. sanctions lists, the department said. The trio hid the Iranian bank ties by withholding incriminating transaction reports from Georgian regulators and using eight businesses they individually or collectively owned to funnel money...

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