Treasury Sanctions Shelbit and Aban Tether for Funneling Millions to IRGC

OFAC's August 7 action against two crypto exchanges and their operator lays bare how the IRGC's crypto financing depended entirely on the custodial layer, not the base layer.

Key takeaways

• The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Shelbit Exchange (Dubai-operated, Georgia-registered) and Aban Tether (Iran-based) on August 7, 2026, along with founder Siavash Kayvanpour and four affiliated front companies, for processing funds on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
• OFAC's own press release documents IRGC wallets sending over $1 million to Shelbit and receiving over $2 million back. Kayvanpour personally sent over $2 million to previously sanctioned Nobitex. Every enforcement lever in this case ran through a custodial intermediary.
• The State Department is offering up to $15 million through its Rewards for Justice program for information leading to disruption of IRGC financial networks.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Shelbit Exchange and Aban Tether on August 7, 2026, along with Shelbit operator Siavash Kayvanpour and a network of front companies spanning Georgia, Poland, and the UAE. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated: "Whether in dollars, rials, or crypto, Treasury will hunt down and dismantle the illicit financial networks that keep the regime afloat." The action was co-developed with IRS Criminal Investigation.

Shelbit, registered in Georgia and operated out of Dubai, was designated under Executive Order 13224 for material support to the IRGC. Per the OFAC release, IRGC-linked wallets sent over $1 million to Shelbit addresses, and Shelbit sent over $2 million back to those same IRGC wallets. Kayvanpour himself sent over $2 million to Nobitex, the Iranian exchange OFAC had already sanctioned in a June 2, 2026 action alongside Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex. Aban Tether, an Iran-based exchange, was designated under Executive Order 13902 for processing transactions on behalf of multiple now-sanctioned Iranian entities.

Reuters, which first reported the Shelbit network's scope on July 31, 2026, identified total platform throughput since May 2024 of at least $4 billion, with $676 million traced to Binance counterparty exposure, per Reuters. Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority had already issued a cease-and-desist against Shelbit General Trading L.L.C. on July 24, 2026, following Reuters' inquiries.

Shelbit issued a statement on August 1 claiming it "categorically rejects any suggestion that the company knowingly participated in money laundering, terrorist financing, illegal gambling activity, sanctions evasion, or activity on behalf of any sanctioned, military, or governmental organization," and claimed it ceased operations in January 2026. OFAC sanctioned it anyway.

The Custodial Layer Is Always the Chokepoint

This is the enforcement story the wallet addresses alone don't tell. The IRGC's operation ran billions through Shelbit because Shelbit was a custodian, a KYC'd counterparty that could be identified, traced, and sanctioned. Aban Tether processed funds for SDN-listed entities because it held customer accounts with records. Kayvanpour had to offramp through exchanges like Nobitex that sat inside the same identifiable custodial stack.

Tether's ability to freeze USDT wallets on TRON is exactly this architecture made explicit: a centralized issuer with an admin key can freeze balances at the protocol level. That's enforcement through custody. Bitcoin addresses linked to these operations could be identified and blacklisted under OFAC rules, making it illegal for U.S. persons to transact with them. But those coins cannot be confiscated at the protocol level without physical seizure of private keys. The enforcement handle disappears the moment you exit the custodial layer.

The IRGC's operation was fragile precisely because it couldn't.

This is what prior Shelbit coverage pointed toward: the network's reach was vast, but every on-ramp and off-ramp touched a permissioned intermediary. Running an operation that needs liquidity at scale structurally depends on custodial intermediaries.

Secondary Sanctions Reach Extends Across Four Countries

Any foreign exchange or financial institution that continues to process transactions for Shelbit or Aban Tether after August 7 risks being cut off from the U.S. financial system entirely. That threat applies regardless of incorporation in Georgia, the UAE, Poland, or Iran. Four entities in Kayvanpour's network were designated simultaneously: SHPS Shelbit (Georgia), Shelbit Technologies Ltd (Poland), Crypto Home DMCC (UAE), and NFT Home DMCC (UAE).

The June 2 action against Iran's four domestic exchanges, combined with this August 7 action targeting an offshore proxy network and an Iran-based stablecoin on-ramp, shows a layered enforcement strategy working across every point in the custodial stack. The State Department's $15 million Rewards for Justice offer for information disrupting IRGC financial mechanisms sits on top of that. Kayvanpour, who holds citizenship from Dominica and Afghanistan and was residing in the UAE, was also convicted in absentia in Iran in 2023 for illegal gambling. The criminal record predates the sanctions by three years.

What to Watch

OFAC's SDN list now includes the wallet addresses tied to this network. Any custodial exchange with exposure to those addresses faces secondary sanctions risk immediately.

The question is whether Binance, cited in Reuters' reporting as a counterparty to $676 million in Shelbit flows per Reuters, faces follow-on regulatory scrutiny. Treasury has not named Binance as a target in sb0598, but the counterparty exposure is in the public record. Watch for any DOJ or FinCEN action that references Shelbit's Binance transactions.

Sources

• OFAC Press Release sb0598 (August 7, 2026)
• OFAC Press Release sb0519 (June 2, 2026)
• Rewards for Justice Program
• First reported by Reuters, July 31, 2026