New Delhi: The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Monday announced that it has reached a $275 million settlement with India’s Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL) over the “apparent violations” of sanctions on Iran in the company’s purchase of LPG.
According to an OFAC statement, AEL has agreed to pay $275 million to settle its potential civil liability for apparent violations of OFAC sanctions on Iran.
“From November 2023 to June 2025, AEL purchased shipments of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) from a Dubai-based trader purporting to supply Omani and Iraqi gas. Red flags should have put AEL on notice that the LPG actually originated from Iran. During this time period, AEL caused US financial institutions to process 32 US dollar-denominated payments totalling approximately $192,104,044 for the shipments,” the statement said.
In June 2023, AEL entered the liquified petroleum gas (LPG) market by importing LPG and selling to customers in India.
In July 2023, representatives of the AEL, including the head of its newly formed LPG unit, met representatives of a Dubai-based trading company involved in supplying purportedly Omani-origin LPG to another Indian entity. In September 2023, the Dubai supplier informed AEL that it would be able to provide the company with LPG through an affiliated entity. A contemporaneous internal AEL document describes the Dubai Supplier as providing “discounted LPG from Middle East” on a spot basis. The Dubai supplier operated through a number of different affiliated entities, the statement said.
At the time, the AEL relied on APSEZ’s 2020 OFAC sanctions compliance program, which prohibited Iranian and/or sanctioned vessels and Iranian-origin cargo from entering APSEZ-controlled ports. AEL conducted its standard Know Your Customer verification process on the Dubai supplier and its affiliates involved in LPG sales to the AEL, which identified no hits against OFAC’s List of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) and Blocked Persons, the statement added.
While the Dubai supplier represented itself as a reputable middleman supplying LPG primarily from Oman, as well as Iraq, in reality, the company served as a conduit for illicit Iranian supply to enter the market, it noted.
From the earliest days of the relationship, a number of red flags called into question the true source of the Dubai supplier’s cargo. On at least four separate occasions between March 2023 and February 2024, AEL learned of third-party concerns that cargos supplied by the Dubai supplier may have originated in Iran, the statement added.
(IANS)
