The net Washington has been throwing over Iran's oil trade tightened again on Wednesday — this time around the lawyers who built the paper walls the shadow fleet hides behind.
The Treasury Department on Wednesday sanctioned Karnakis & Karnakis, a law firm based in Panama and Greece, accusing it of spending years building the corporate cover that let Iranian oil, petrochemicals and steel move around the world unseen. The designations, imposed under Executive Order 13902 as part of Operation Economic Outcast, also hit five of the firm's own people, the cargo fleet operator it serves as corporate agent, two shipping agents in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, and nine vessels identified as blocked property, Treasury said. It is the administration's maximum-pressure campaign against Iranian oil reaching past the tankers themselves to the professional enablers who make the trade possible.
According to Treasury, the firm's product was invisibility. Karnakis & Karnakis used its legal practice to register shipping companies that owned shadow fleet vessels responsible for shipping hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Iranian steel, petroleum and petrochemicals, and its employees sat as directors and officers of the companies they registered in order to obfuscate the true beneficial owners. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the firm for years "set up shell companies to hide the true owners of vessels carrying Iranian oil, petrochemicals, and steel," Reuters reported. One company it set up, Elias Shipping and Trading Group S.A., owned the tanker RAMONA 1 and served as a front for Syria's Al-Qatirji Company, which Treasury said sold millions of barrels of Iranian oil for the benefit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force and Yemen's Houthis. The firm also built much of the corporate architecture for the shipping empire of Iranian liquefied petroleum gas magnate Seyed Asadoollah Emamjomeh, whose network has shipped hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Iranian LPG and crude oil.
"Whether you are conducting illegal oil transfers at sea or sitting in the corner office of a law firm, if you are supporting the Iranian regime, we will find you and sanction you."
The sanctions reach into the firm's own offices. Treasury said Karnakis & Karnakis was founded and is owned by Sofianos Karnakis Kosmas and Konstantinos Karnakis Kosmas, dual Panamanian-Greek nationals, and it designated both men along with Ioanis Karnakis Kosmas and Panamanian nationals Pedro Ortega Jones and Roberto Ortega Jones. The fleet operator Roxette Maritime Shipping and Trading S.A., for which the firm serves as corporate agent, was designated as well, and seven of its Panama-flagged cargo vessels — ANEMOS, GLORIS, PRIDE, DESTINY, FLAMINGO 1, HARMONY and PRINCE — were identified as blocked property; Treasury said ANEMOS, GLORIS and PRIDE had all shipped Iranian-origin goods, including petrochemicals and steel, within the past year.
The same action swept up the port-side helpers. Singapore-based Amigoz Singapore PTE. Ltd. was designated for acting as agent on a shipment of Iranian light crude overseen by Sepehr Energy Jahan Nama Pars Company, a network Treasury says allocates billions of dollars' worth of commodities to Iranian military entities; Amigoz has also been associated with the shipping network of Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani and provided bunkering services to the shadow fleet vessel ZIXUAN. Dubai-based Whales Shipping Line LLC, which acted as shipping agent for a sanctioned front company that organized the purchase of tens of millions of dollars' worth of Iranian petrochemicals, was designated too, and its two UAE-flagged support vessels, WHALES DIAMOND and WHALES PEARL, were blocked.
The banks are next in line. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued its first-ever administrative subpoena under section 5318(k) of the Bank Secrecy Act to advance an investigation into an unnamed Greek bank's potential ties to Iran and its proxies, working in close coordination with European partners, including in Greece. FinCEN also issued requests for information to six other European banks it did not name over their relationships with Iranian financial institutions under U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported.
Wednesday's move is the latest wave of Operation Economic Outcast, the campaign Secretary Scott Bessent announced on August 24 to sever the Iranian regime's remaining economic lifelines, and it lands as Washington leans on economic force: Reuters noted the United States has held off striking Iran this month in the war launched February 28, instead continuing the blockade of Iranian ports and issuing wave after wave of sanctions on Iranian shipping networks and those who aid them. Designation means any property of the named people and companies in the United States or in the hands of U.S. persons is blocked, and foreign financial institutions that do significant business with them risk secondary sanctions of their own. Karnakis & Karnakis did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported, and no Greek or Panamanian government reaction appeared in Wednesday's coverage. Bessent's message to the wider industry was blunt: "Iran's facilitators must make a choice: Either you are with us or against us. We know who you are, we know what you're doing, and we will continue to take action."