TURKEY and China are helping Iran to evade UN sanctions by providing them with secret banking facilities to purchase goods, Western security officials claim.
The country’s central bank is trying to avoid the effects of the wide-ranging sanctions on Iran’s illegal nuclear programme by using financial institutions in China and Turkey to fund the purchase of vital
goods.
Western security officials said that China, which is Iran’s largest oil
trading partner, was playing a major role in helping Iran to avoid the
sanctions. Instead of transferring oil payments to Iran, Chinese banks are
using the money to buy goods on behalf of the Iranians, then shipping them
to Iran.
“It is like an old-fashioned barter mechanism,” said a senior security
official.
“The money Iran earns from oil sales goes into banks in China and is then
used for Iranian purchases of other goods and materials. It is a very good
way of getting round the sanctions.”
Security officials have also identified a number of financial institutions
in Turkey that are helping Iran to evade sanctions.
Turkey, which maintains good diplomatic relations with Tehran, is
particularly useful to Iran because of its close trading ties with Europe.
Investigators said that they had found evidence of Turkish businesses trying
to purchase financial institutions in Europe on behalf of Iran which can
then be used by Tehran to buy much-needed goods and materials for its
stricken economy.
According to security officials responsible for monitoring the effectiveness
of the sanctions, the sanctions-busting operation is masterminded by Iran’s
Revolutionary Guards, said to own more than 50 per cent of the Iranian
economy.
They are taking an increasingly influential role in the running of the
Central Bank of Iran, which is itself the subject of international
sanctions. “Today the Central Bank of Iran is being run like an intelligence
operation,” said one investigator.
Iran is particularly keen to have access to banks in Germany, one of the
world’s leading handlers of euros. US Treasury department officials have
found a number of transactions through German banks that appear to have come
from Turkey, but are controlled by Tehran.
Iran is also trying to transfer funds through Ukraine and Belarus.
The disclosures come amid warnings from diplomats based in Vienna, the
headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran may be
preparing to expand its nuclear programme to an underground site near the
city of Qom, enabling it to speed up the production of enriched uranium, a
vital component for nuclear weapons.
Reports said Tehran was almost ready to install thousands of new-generation
centrifuges that can produce enriched uranium much more quickly and
efficiently than its present machines.
By Con Coughlin
