Treasury Targets Key Supreme Leader Financier and Iran’s Shadow Exchange Houses

WASHINGTON—Today, following Iran’s resumption of attacks on international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took action against Iranian financial facilitator Ali Ansari (Ansari), who oversees a sprawling global network of assets benefitting Iran’s leader—Mojtaba Khamenei—and other regime elites. Ansari has effectively institutionalized large‑scale embezzlement within the Iranian regime, diverting publicly funded wealth into an extensive overseas portfolio of real estate and commercial holdings to enrich himself, regime elites—including notable senior figures within the Supreme Leader’s Office—and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). OFAC today also targeted key Iranian exchange houses that move billions of dollars annually on behalf of sanctioned Iranian banks, using layers of shell companies to obscure the regime’s illicit financial activity.“The so-called Supreme Leader is hiding in seclusion while his regime crumbles,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.