The US has sanctioned a United Arab Emirates-based Indian national and two India-based entities operating as part of Iran’s “shadow fleet” and involved in shipping Iranian oil.
Jugwinder Singh Brar owns multiple shipping companies that boast a fleet of nearly 30 vessels, many of which operate as part of Iran’s “shadow fleet”, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement on Thursday.
In addition to his UAE-based businesses, Brar owns or controls India-based shipping company Global Tankers Private Limited and petrochemical sales company B and P Solutions Private Limited.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Brar, two UAE and two India-based entities that own and operate Brar’s vessels that have transported Iranian oil on behalf of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and the Iranian military. Brar’s vessels engage in high-risk ship-to-ship (STS) transfers of Iranian petroleum in waters off Iraq, Iran, the UAE, and the Gulf of Oman, the agency said adding that these cargoes then reach other facilitators who blend the oil or fuel with products from other countries and falsify shipping documents to conceal links to Iran, allowing these cargoes to reach the international market.
“The Iranian regime relies on its network of unscrupulous shippers and brokers like Brar and his companies to enable its oil sales and finance its destabilizing activities,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said, adding that the US remains focused on disrupting all elements of Iran’s oil exports, particularly those who seek to profit from this trade.
Brar is a ship captain and owner and director of UAE-based companies Prime Tankers LLC and Glory International FZ-LLC. Through his companies, Brar owns, operates, or manages a fleet of nearly 30 oil and petroleum product tankers, the majority of which are Handysize tankers that stick to coastal waters and carry a fraction of the cargo of larger tankers.
