THE US is seeking to forfeit $47m of proceeds from the sale of an Iranian oil cargo that was discharged in Croatia in 2022 and sold last year.

The Department of Justice announced the move on Wednesday, stating that the proceeds were forfeitable as “property of, or affording a person a source of influence over,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or the IRGC Qods Force, both of which are designated terrorist organisations.

In a complaint filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday, prosecutors detailed the convoluted journey that landed nearly 1m barrels of oil from Iran’s Kharg Island in storage tanks at the Janaf facility in Omišalj nearly three years ago.

The cargo was loaded in January 2022 by the very large crude carrier Berg 1 (IMO: 9262168), which was sanctioned by the US late last year.

Prosecutors alleged that the cargo then underwent three ship-to-ship transfers before Narcissus (IMO: 9232931), then named Okeanos, discharged it in Janaf’s storage tanks on April 22, 2022, using fake shipping documents that claimed it originated in Malaysia.

The cargo was stored by an unnamed Swiss entity that acted on behalf of US-sanctioned trader Triliance Petrochemical and was the “purported owner of the petroleum product”, according to the complaint.

The storage fees were paid for in US dollars, and these transactions were conducted through US financial institutions that would have refused them had they known they were linked with Iranian oil, the Department of Justice said.

In June of last year, the unnamed Swiss entity sold the cargo to an unidentified international company, who in turn sold it to another unnamed international company. The proceeds were then seized by the US.

The Swiss entity “has exclusively done business on behalf of Triliance, selling oil products produced in Iran” since 2022, prosecutors alleged.

They added that Triliance’s manager, Iranian national Ali Bayandorian, convinced the Swiss entity’s owner in early 2022 to “do all its business on behalf of Bayandorian and Triliance, essentially agreeing to provide [the Swiss entity]’s owner with Iranian oil products on credit and allow the profits of sales to be maintained in bank accounts kept by [the Swiss entity]’s owner.”

The US has been pursuing Triliance and its networks since it was designated in January 2020. Late last year, a US court approved the forfeiture of nearly $12m connected to shipments of oil and petrochemicals facilitated by front companies of Triliance.

“We will aggressively enforce US sanctions against Iran, in furtherance of President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign,” said US Attorney Edward Martin.

“With the continued seizures of Iranian oil and US dollar profits, we are sending a clear message to Iran that bypassing the sanctions put in place by the US Government is not as easy as playing a shell game with tankers filled with oil.”

An expansion gone awry

The prosecutors allege that Bayandorian intended to store the oil in Croatia to increase the marketability of Iranian products in Europe and “potentially to establish a future purchasing stream to European buyers”.

That ambition was likely quickly shattered shortly after Okeanos’s Iranian oil cargo first reached Croatian shores.

Following in Okeanos’s footsteps, another tanker laden with Iranian oil, Olia (IMO: 9268112), then Arc 1, was set to in Rijeka in early May. But the tanker abruptly reversed course as it approached the port after US advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran sent letters to the port of Rijeka, port agents, and Croatian refineries, reminding them of US policy regarding Iranian oil.

Arc 1 spent more than four weeks off Croatia before awaiting a decision on whether its cargo would be accepted or rejected by the Croatian government.

In August of that year, Arc 1 transferred its oil via a ship-to-ship transfer to Phoenix I (IMO: 9236248), which then delivered it to China, ending the cargo’s epic journey of over six months and more than 17,000 nautical miles.