OFAC sanctioned two UK-registered crypto exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, for facilitating financial activity that allowed Iran to evade sanctions. OFAC also sanctioned seven Iranian individuals, six of whom are connected to the IRGC, the regime’s flagship security organization. According to OFAC, the individuals designated are responsible for the regime’s brutal crackdown on its own people during civil riots that began in late December 2025, with reports of more than 36,000 deaths on January 8-9.
Elliptic has taken urgent action to ensure that addresses included in the latest designations are available to screen and trace using our next-generation holistic blockchain analytics technology. Customers will now be able to ensure that they do not inadvertently process funds originating from, or being sent to, these designated addresses. Babak Zanjani was freed from imprisonment in order to launder money for the regime and has provided financial support for major IRGC projects and the Iranian regime as a whole; Zanjani is reportedly connected to Zedcex and Zedxion. Per the press release: “This marks OFAC’s first designation of a digital asset exchange for operating in the financial sector of the Iranian economy.”
Today’s designations come in the wake of recent EU sanctions against IRGC-linked individuals and entities. In September, OFAC sanctioned a cryptoasset-enabled financial network for facilitating Iranian oil smuggling, listing Alireza Derakhshan and Arash Estaki Alivand. Zedcex was indirectly sanctioned in September 2025 by Israel’s NBCTF, which published 187 crypto addresses affiliated with the IRGC; OFAC named seven addresses today as belonging to Zedcex and Zedxion, which have processed over $389 million, including $149.3 million to a single address.
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