Operation Economic Outcast Disrupts Digital Asset Exchange Enabling the Iranian Regime

WASHINGTON—Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated BitBank, a priority digital assets venture controlled by OFAC-designated Iranian financier Babak Zanjani (Zanjani), as part of Operation Economic Outcast, the Trump Administration’s whole-of-government economic campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its enablers. Today’s designations also include BitBank’s developer, Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company (Pishtaz Simorgh) and three associates of Zanjani: Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein,Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein, and Seyed Adel Heidari. The entities and individuals designated today are key components of the Iranian regime’s digital assets-based sanctions evasion infrastructure. “Today’s designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC’s reach,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.