The United States has sold more than a million barrels of seized Iranian fuel last year, a Justice Department official reported, as another ship containing intercepted Iranian crude sails to a port in the North American country.
The seizures are part of the economic sanctions imposed on Tehran because of its nuclear program and the designation by the United States of a number of Iranian groups as terrorists.
In a new approach last year, the administration of former US President Donald Trump used civil forfeiture procedures to seize 1.2 million barrels of gasoline that it said were being shipped from Iran to Venezuela aboard four vessels. tank.
The shipments, Washington’s largest seizure of Iranian fuel to date, were transferred to other vessels and shipped to the United States, where it was intended to sell the fuel and distribute the proceeds to a fund for American victims of US-sponsored terrorism. State.
Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi told Reuters this week that the sale of the shipments had been completed.