Reported by Miles Johnson, Stephen Morris and Lucy Fisher

Iran used two of the UK’s biggest banks to covertly move money around the world as part of a vast sanctions-evasion scheme backed by Tehran’s intelligence services.

Lloyds and Santander UK provided accounts to British front companies secretly owned by a sanctioned Iranian petrochemicals company based near Buckingham Palace, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.

The state-controlled Petrochemical Commercial Company was part of a network that the US accuses of raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and of working with Russian intelligence agencies to raise money for Iranian proxy militias.

Both PCC and its British subsidiary PCC UK have been under US sanctions since November 2018. 

Documents, emails and accounting records show that during this time PCC’s UK division has continued to operate out of an office in Grosvenor Gardens in Belgravia by using a complex web of front entities in Britain and other countries.

Read full report: https://www.ft.com/content/aac08cf4-a6f2-4e39-995f-23f7fa5ea5ea?sharetype=blocked