The U.S. has imposed sanctions on two cryptocurrency exchanges that laundered millions for Iran

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has imposed sanctions on two cryptocurrency exchanges—Shelbit Exchange and Aban Tether—accusing them of laundering funds for the benefit of the Iranian armed forces and previously sanctioned Iranian financial platforms. The decision was made by OFAC on August 7 as part of the «Economic Fury» campaign.

The key figure in the case is Siavash Keivanpour, an Iranian native with citizenship in Dominica and Afghanistan. He ran the network from the UAE and Georgia and, through the Georgia-registered company SHPS Shelbit, managed the exchange of the same name. According to the Treasury Department, wallets linked to the Iranian armed forces sent more than $ 1 million in cryptocurrency to Shelbit, while the exchange itself transferred more than $ 2 million back to Iranian wallets, and another $ 2 million to the already sanctioned Iranian exchange Nobitex, which had previously been implicated in cases involving the financing of terrorism.

In addition to working with Iranian military entities, Shelbit, according to U.S. allegations, laundered tens of millions of dollars received from a Persian-language online gambling network. The UAE’s virtual asset regulator, VARA, took action against Shelbit General Trading in January 2025 and again in July 2026, but the exchange continued to operate. Entities linked to Kayvanpour have also been added to the sanctions list: the Polish company Shelbit Technologies, as well as the UAE-based companies Crypto Home and NFT Home DMCC.

The second exchange, Aban Tether, conducted transactions worth millions of dollars with already-blocked Iranian platforms—Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex. Both organizations have been added to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list—effectively the U.S. government’s blacklist. Any property subject to U.S. jurisdiction is automatically frozen, and foreign companies that continue to cooperate with entities on the list risk being subject to secondary sanctions.

The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program is offering up to $ 15 million for information that will disrupt the financial operations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. These sanctions are part of a broad campaign to pressure Iran in the crypto space: in May alone, the U.S. froze $ 131 million in Iranian cryptocurrency, and according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, approximately $ 1 billion in Iranian crypto assets have been seized since the campaign began.