By Gavin Finch, Allison Martell, Denise Ajiri, James Pearson and Elizabeth Howcroft
THE sons of a powerful family with close ties to Iran’s new supreme leader control the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, transforming it from a startup into a conduit to the global economy used by both blacklisted state institutions and ordinary citizens.
Since Nobitex was founded by the two brothers under an alternative family name, it has processed between tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions linked to sanctioned groups including Iran’s central bank and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a Reuters investigation has found.
