Mumbai-based Mehdi Group, its directors and officials, its ten subsidiaries, and shell companies have been sanctioned by the US on Wednesday as part of a vast “oil-for-terror” network of firms, ships and individuals allegedly directed by and financially supporting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that supplied Syria with oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars in breach of US sanctions.
Mehdi Group and its directors/officials, Ali Ghadeer Mehdi, Ali Zaheer Mohammad Mehdi, Anuj Bhardwaj have managed vessels and found additional ones to move Iranian oil, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) wrote in a September 4 advisory to the maritime community, warning them of the risks involved with participating in “illicit schemes such as the IRGC’s oil-for-terror shipping network”.
