The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday sanctioned eight currency-exchange businesses in Ontario and British Columbia, accusing them of helping Iranian entities dodge financial sanctions and, in several cases, of moving money for alleged drug kingpin Ryan Wedding.
The penalties freeze any assets the firms hold in the United States and bar Americans from doing business with them, effectively locking them out of the dollar-based financial system.
Treasury named Million Exchange, Amin Exchange, Cryptoyal, NIA Nations Currency, Farah Exchange and Darvish Exchange among the targets, along with several numbered companies.
Some of the firms washed their earnings by swapping rials and other money into cryptocurrency and similar digital assets, Treasury said. It alleges that Wedding used several of the businesses to launder millions in drug money through digital-asset transfers before his arrest in January.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department would go after the Iranian government's financial channels wherever in the world they operate.
Canada cannot be a safe haven for illicit financial facilitators that provide sanctions-evasion services to the Iranian regime and its proxies
Scott Bessent, U.S. Treasury secretary
A widening pressure campaign
Canada's anti-money laundering agency, FINTRAC, said it worked with the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, on the action. The Canadian agency said it can share intelligence with counterparts around the world under bilateral agreements.
The move falls under Operation Economic Outcast, a Treasury campaign meant to cut off the money that keeps Iran's government and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps running. Canada also designates the IRGC a terrorist organization. The sanctions come as the United States continues its war with Iran.
In a separate action Friday, FinCEN ordered U.S. financial institutions to stop processing transfers involving MEXC Global, an exchanger incorporated in the Seychelles. FinCEN says the company handled at least $16 billion in illicit transactions connected to Iran, North Korea and Russia.
Two days earlier, Treasury penalized a network in India and Turkiye that it says helped Iran get around limits on its oil exports and airlines. Treasury identified the operators as a married couple in Chandigarh, Suniel Kumar Sharma and Jaspreet Preeti Shahid.
The Wedding case
Last week, Washington claimed the pressure had driven the rial to new lows and pushed Iranian inflation to roughly 90 percent.
Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who raced slalom at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, was captured in Mexico in January and brought to the United States. He is being held in federal custody on murder, attempted murder and trafficking charges ahead of two trials set for March and October of next year.
U.S. authorities allege he ordered several killings, including that of a witness who could have testified against him in a 2024 narcotics case. Wedding was sentenced to a U.S. prison term in 2010 after a cocaine conspiracy conviction, and authorities say he returned to trafficking afterward with protection from Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel.
This week, Mexican judge Luis Benitez Alcantara was arrested over allegations that he took a $2 million bribe to free Andrew Clark on bail, the U.S. Justice Department said. Clark, a Canadian, is accused of serving as Wedding's second-in-command.
