ERBIL () - The US Department of Justice announced on Monday that Iran used an active cryptocurrency network operating in China to launder $1.5 billion in oil revenues, and filed a forfeiture action to seize $61 million in proceeds from the sale of sanctioned Iranian oil, in the most significant single disclosure yet of the digital financial infrastructure Iran has built to evade Operation Economic Outcast.
"Iran used an active network operating in the field of digital currencies in China to launder $1.5 billion from oil revenues,"the Justice Department confirmed in its statement. The department separately announced it had filed a complaint to seize $61 million in proceeds from the sale of sanctioned Iranian oil.
The disclosure represents the first detailed public accounting of how Iran has been using China-based cryptocurrency infrastructure to convert sanctioned oil revenues into usable funds outside the reach of the US dollar-clearing system that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been systematically closing off since Operation Economic Outcast was declared on August 24, 2026. Bessent had confirmed on Friday, September 11, that Tehran no longer has the ability to access the US dollar, and had warned that digital assets would be among the next targets of the campaign. The Justice Department's Monday action against a $1.5 billion Iran-linked Chinese crypto network is the concrete enforcement step behind that warning.
The China dimension of the forfeiture action is particularly significant. The US has thus far been careful to sanction only smaller Chinese entities such as teapot refineries while stopping short of the major Chinese banks and financial institutions whose involvement would risk a direct rupture in US-China economic relations. The Justice Department's action targeting a China-based cryptocurrency network used to launder Iranian oil revenues takes the enforcement campaign into Chinese financial infrastructure through the digital asset channel rather than the traditional banking channel, potentially allowing Washington to act against Chinese-based Iranian financial evasion without directly confronting state-owned Chinese banks.
The $61 million forfeiture complaint represents the recoverable portion of a much larger flow of funds, with the $1.5 billion total figure suggesting a systematic and sustained laundering operation rather than an isolated transaction. Iran's ability to move $1.5 billion through a Chinese cryptocurrency network demonstrates both the scale of the shadow financial architecture Tehran has built to survive the sanctions regime and the continued vulnerabilities in that architecture that US law enforcement is now actively exploiting.
Treasury Secretary Bessent had announced on Friday that airlines, shipping, and digital assets are all potential targets under Operation Economic Outcast's expanding sanctions framework, and had warned that malicious actors will be systematically removed. Monday's Justice Department action against the China-based crypto network is the first concrete implementation of the digital assets enforcement track that Bessent had publicly flagged.
