The United States has sanctioned an unlicensed multi-state cryptocurrency exchange, alleging it processed millions of dollars of crypto for Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other groups linked to the Iranian state.

Background

The designation follows a Reuters investigation that identified the Dubai-based exchange, Shelbit, as the hub of a $4 billion Iranian sanctions evasion scheme. The investigation found that Shelbit moved crypto on behalf of Iran’s central bank, one of the world’s largest illegal online gambling networks, and to addresses linked by the Israeli government to the IRGC.

The U.S. Treasury also sanctioned the expatriate Iranian who founded Shelbit and a network of other companies, Siavash Kayvanpour, for providing material support to the IRGC and Nobitex, Iran’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange.

“Treasury will hunt down and dismantle the illicit financial networks that keep the regime afloat,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement.

Response

Shelbit’s website had been down for months, with no way for customers to carry out transactions, but the exchange continued to process money, even during the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran. The site reactivated the day after the Reuters investigation was published.

Shelbit said in a statement on its reactivated website that it had ceased operations in January 2026 and categorically rejects any suggestion that the company knowingly participated in money laundering, terrorist financing, illegal gambling activity, sanctions evasion, or activity on behalf of any sanctioned, military, or governmental organization.

Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.