Brigadier General Hossein-Reza Sadeghi and his son Saeed Sadeghi helped reroute Iran oil sales payments, two informed sources said. They described moving financial operations from the United Arab Emirates to Russia.
The elder Sadeghi advises the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Tuesday’s investigation linked both men to reorganising the financial network.
On October 4, an IRGC-affiliated Fars news agency reported recovering $1.5 billion in oil revenues through Russian banks.
According to Fars, the Central Bank of Iran used an alternative route to recover money held by trusted oil intermediaries. President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran accepted Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad’s resignation later that day.
However, presidential office communications deputy Mehdi Tabatabaei offered a different explanation for the departure.
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He told state television that Paknejad had submitted his resignation much earlier for personal reasons. Pezeshkian accepted it at the minister’s insistence.
By contrast, the two sources linked his departure to efforts to protect an allegedly corrupt IRGC Intelligence Organisation oil-sales network. They described the payment changes as part of those efforts.
Meanwhile, Saeed Sadeghi worked in Moscow to move the network’s financial operations away from the UAE, according to the sources.
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Although he previously became chief executive of Naftiran Intertrade Company, he currently holds no official position at the Oil Ministry.
Separately, Central Bank of Iran Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati visited Mir Business Bank in Moscow on June 17. Iran’s ambassador to Russia accompanied him.
Bank Melli Iran wholly owns the Moscow-based bank, which provides correspondent banking and foreign-currency services. US Treasury sanctioned it on November 5, 2018.
