Investigators in Bahrain discovered evidence of a corruption scheme by a Persian Gulf bank that secretly aided Iran in skirting international sanctions for more than 10 years, according to the Washington Post.
A Bahraini government audit revealed that Future Bank, a now-closed joint venture bank owned in part by two of Iran’s largest lenders, frequently manipulated documents to cover up illicit trades between Iran and foreign partners.
According to the documents obtained and reviewed by the Post, Future Bank allegedly hid at least $7 billion of transactions between 2004 and 2015, when many Iranian banks were prohibited by sanctions from interacting with international financial markets.
The audit also uncovered hundreds of bank accounts linked to individuals who were convicted of money laundering and terrorism financing, in addition to phantom loans given to companies that were controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite branch of the Iranian armed forces.
Future Bank has been accused of secretly helping Iran work around sanctions before, leading U.S. and European officials to blacklist the bank from accessing SWIFT, an international electronic payment messaging system.
