An Iranian-linked network used naval mortgages to disguise billions of dollars in oil shipments to China from Iran, Venezuela and Russia between 2019 and 2023, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
In 2019, an Iranian man calling himself Saeed Alikhani approached a Swiss lawyer in Zug with a request to arrange mortgages on tankers through a Panama-based broker, Ocean Glory Giant.
The mortgages, normally used as security on shipping loans, were instead employed as guarantees for oil trades. Within months, at least nine tankers were registered, later expanding to more than 30 worth nearly $1b.
The FT, working with research group C4ADS, traced the ships’ movements and found they were carrying sanctioned oil.
“This oil network and its suppliers show in intimate detail how tools and tactics used to resist western sanctions have proliferated among sanctioned states,” said Andrew Boling, an investigator at C4ADS.
Tankers tied to China
Each vessel was nominally owned by a separate shell company with Chinese directors who often had little connection to shipping. Phone numbers and addresses in the mortgage files linked several of the firms to Chinese nationals sanctioned by the US under President Donald Trump's first term.
In one case, the Swiss lawyer signed a $24m mortgage for a Hong Kong firm whose director was later sanctioned for trading Iranian oil.
He said the procedures seemed routine: “I received a draft mortgage agreement, I checked whether the counterparty or the vessel was on any sanctions list, and I signed the document.”
From Iran to Russia
Tracking data showed mortgaged vessels carried Iranian crude from Kharg Island to China, later expanding to Russian Urals shipments after 2022. One tanker, Skadi, transported both Iranian and Russian oil while under a $20m mortgage.
While active, the network handled about 130m barrels worth nearly $10b, with 93 percent of deliveries ending up in China, according to FT and C4ADS analysis.
By late 2024, Ocean Glory itself was placed under US sanctions. “Its dark fleet and support networks have become a model — if not a resource — for helping shadow oil volumes flow eastwards,” said Claire Jungman, maritime risk director at Vortexa.
China’s foreign ministry responded that “normal cooperation between countries and Iran within the framework of international law is justified, reasonable, and legal, and should be respected and protected.”
