Babak Zanjani had been on death row for years, but last year Iranian authorities suddenly decided to release him. He had talents that would soon be put to use.
Before his arrest for alleged corruption, Zanjani had become one of Iran’s wealthiest men and its best-known sanctions evader by helping the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sell billions of dollars worth of oil and bringing the proceeds back home – often in the form of gold bullion.
Now, Zanjani, 55, has again emerged at the forefront of Iranian efforts to evade sanctions, accused by US officials of using cryptocurrency and international connections to transfer money to the regime and help fund its regional militias.
Two crypto exchanges linked to Zanjani – called ZSEX and ZXion – have processed more than $94 billion in transactions since 2022, according to the US Treasury, which also includes wallets linked to the Revolutionary Guard, which imposed sanctions on him in January. Zanjani has denied the allegations.
Treasury also designated both exchanges “terrorist assets” and said Zanjani had laundered money and provided funding for Revolutionary Guard projects.
Zanjani has spoken openly on social media and in interviews about helping Iran avoid Western sanctions, and has presented himself as an “economic soldier” for the regime. “Even a small economic structure is more powerful than any warship,” Zanjani said recently on X. “But today it has become clear that the structure of the economy … can put a country on par with the superpowers.”
Asked for comment for this article, Zanjani denied that he was using cryptocurrency exchanges to transfer funds to the Revolutionary Guard, calling it a “fake report.”
Zanjani’s story is the story of a man who amassed extraordinary wealth as a shrewd operator for the pressured Iranian regime. He then quickly fell from grace before reemerging last year as if he had never passed away.
Born into a working-class family in southern Tehran, he earned his first paycheck by selling jewelry in the market, he told the Iranian Aseman newspaper in a 2013 interview. He later became a driver for the central bank governor and began trading currency, he said, earning up to $17,000 a day by cutting deals due to the discrepancy between official and market rates.
Zanjani set up an import-export business that sold sheep skins to Turkey, among other goods, and said he later used his international connections to secure oil sales of up to $90 million for Khatam al-Anbiya, the Revolutionary Guard’s engineering branch. His talents attracted the attention of Rostam Ghasemi, the head of that organization, who later became oil minister under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Soon Zanjani was running the largest publicly known money-laundering scheme in modern Iranian history, draining billions of dollars of desperately needed money into Iran’s struggling banking system. Before he turned 40, he controlled a network of about 60 companies, including banks, airlines, and cosmetics. Many of them were shell companies obscuring the path to oil and wealth.
He said in 2013, “This is my job: the anti-sanctions campaign.” “I worked for the country.”
The fair-skinned and clean-haired Zanjani never served in the army, but he enlisted himself in the Revolutionary Guard. They introduced themselves as the “Economic Basij”, referring to the Guard’s voluntary militia.
During their heyday, they sold oil using the Malaysian island of Labuan, a tax haven where Iranian ships were leased by shell companies and transferred oil to tankers sailing under the flags of other countries. According to the US Treasury, he acquired a controlling stake in a bank in Malaysia and founded a bank in Tajikistan. The banks allowed him to transfer money to Türkiye, where the cash was converted into gold and smuggled into Iran.
In a country where corruption is rife but ostentatious displays of wealth are frowned upon, Zanjani angered many. He appeared in media reports posing with Rolex watches, with luxury cars and in a private jet, while benefiting from sanctions that squeezed ordinary Iranians. The EU approved them in 2012, followed by the US in 2013.
Nevertheless, he also inspired admiration. In 2013, readers of two Iranian newspapers voted him third in the Person of the Year poll, behind then-President Hassan Rouhani and his Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
Later that year, after Rouhani was elected on a promise to clean up corruption, Zanjani was arrested, accused of withholding $2.7 billion of state funds. Zanjani said international sanctions prevented him from returning the money. In 2016, he was sentenced to death for alleged “corruption on earth”, a charge not usually used for financial corruption but for alleged enemies of the state.
In 2024, the judiciary commuted Zanjani’s death sentence to 20 years in prison, saying he had cooperated in returning his outstanding assets. The decision came as Iran was preparing for Trump’s possible second term and the reimposition of sanctions lifted by European countries under the 2015 nuclear deal. At around the same time, ownership of his group, Sorinet Group, was transferred to the National Iranian Oil Company, according to Iranian corporate filings obtained by risk data firm Kharon. Zanjaani was released the following year.
Zanjani’s crypto exchanges have helped Iran maintain support for militias abroad, according to TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence company that works with US authorities, handling the transfer of more than $10 million to a Yemeni businessman sanctioned by the US for operating a smuggling network to finance the Houthi rebels.
Of the large sums processed by Zanjani’s two exchanges in recent years, TRM tracked about $1 billion transferred between 2024 and 2025, along with smaller sums in 2023. TRM said that about 56% of the tracked transactions were linked to the Revolutionary Guard.
According to Companies House, the UK’s companies register, Zexion was registered in 2021 at a central London address with Zanjani as a director under his middle name Morteza. ZSEX was registered at the same address in 2022. The dates show that he was already working for the Iranian regime from prison, although the flow of money was minimal until 2024. Since the ban list, Companies House has taken steps to forcibly dissolve the exchanges.
Afshon Ostovar, an expert on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, said Iran’s use of cryptocurrencies reflects the “peculiar nature of the sanctions.” He said the vast military-commercial empire makes the Islamic Republic resilient to external pressure.
“That makes it difficult to topple the regime, because the regime is not just one person, not just a group of military officers,” Ostovar said. “It’s a layered system of individuals and institutions and bank accounts and foreign partners and crypto wallets and all these other things.”
In recent months, as before, Zanjani has drawn attention to himself by touting business deals on social media and speaking in a manner that is unusual for pro-regime figures in Iran. He has criticized Iran’s “crony parallel systems” for failing to acknowledge this. the pain of the people protestingAnd ignoring the advice of experts. On Monday he criticized the regime’s internet restrictions hurting businesses.
Zanjani’s business dealings go beyond crypto. A few months after his release, he announced an $800 million deal with the State Railroad Company, calling it “the largest private sector investment in the history of Iranian railways”.
According to Kharon, his new holding company, DotOne, claims to be involved in cryptocurrency, logistics, transportation, aviation, and telecommunications. It lists several Dubai-based companies, including an investment firm, DotOne Gold, and a taxi service, DotOne Trip.
DotOne Gold officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite differences with the regime a decade ago, Zanjani’s release shows he still has value to Iran, perhaps now more than ever, as it faces intense US and Israeli economic pressure, said Emanuele Ottolenghi, senior research fellow at the Center for Research on Terror Financing think tank, who has followed Zanjani closely for years.
“You need people like Zanjani to break the siege,” Ottolenghi said.
“Having someone who has the skills, the talent and who is obviously able to quickly understand new technology means a lot to them,” he said. “That’s why they let him out of the dungeon.”
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
