IRGC used UK-registered crypto exchanges to move about $1B to dodge sanctions
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps moved roughly $1 billion since 2023 using two UK-registered crypto exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, to evade sanctions. TRM Labs’ analysis, cited by The Washington Post, shows IRGC-linked transactions accounted for about 56% of the exchanges’ volume from 2023–2025, with most activity in USDT on the Tron network. The flow jumped from $24 million in 2023 to over $1 billion in 2024–25, and investigators traced 187 wallet addresses linking the activity to sanctioned individuals, including Babak Zanjani. The exchanges claim AML compliance, but comments were unavailable from the firms or authorities.