Photo: GreenOak/Shutterstock
The UK government has announced a new round of sanctions targeting an Iranian oil magnate and multiple companies enabling Iran’s destabilizing activities, with a significant focus on maritime and petrochemical trading networks.
The sanctions target Iranian oil magnate Hossein Shamkhani and several companies involved in shipping and commodity trading, including Milavous Group, a Dubai-based shipping and commodity trading company led by Shamkhani.
UK Minister for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer, emphasized the strategic importance of these actions: “Iran’s reliance on revenues from trading networks and connected organisations enables it to carry out its destabilising activities, including supporting proxies and partners across the region and facilitating state threats on UK soil.”
The sanctions package includes asset freezes and director disqualifications for Petrochemical Commercial Company (PCC), a Tehran-based petrochemical trading company, British financial services company Admiral Group, and Ocean Leonid Investments, a hedge fund with offices in London, Dubai, and Geneva.
“We are clear that we will continue to hold Iran to account, and today’s designations mark a definitive step in doing so,” Falconer stated.
The new measures were implemented under the Iran Sanctions Regulations (2023). According to the UK government, these latest designations bring the total number of Iranian individuals and entities sanctioned by the UK to more than 450, targeting the regime’s human rights violations, nuclear weapons program, and destabilizing international activities.
The sanctions impose comprehensive restrictions, including asset freezes that prevent UK citizens or businesses from dealing with funds or economic resources owned by the designated persons, travel bans prohibiting entry to the UK, and director disqualification measures that make it an offense for sanctioned individuals to act as directors of UK-connected companies.
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