US sanctions a Turkish company serving Iranian airlines and an Indian network of fake flags for Iran’s shadow fleet

The US Treasury Department on Wednesday, November 4, imposed sanctions on a Turkey-based aircraft ground-handling company that continues to serve Iranian airlines already on Washington’s blacklist. The same package hit a network from India that, according to the American side, issued fake flags and forged certificates to ships of the shadow fleet carrying Iranian oil. The decisions were announced in a Treasury press release and form part of “Operation Economic Outcast”.

“As we have said many times, with Operation Economic Outcast you are either with us or against us,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. “We know where you are and we will sanction those who continue to support the Iranian regime, whether by land, sea or air.”

Turkey’s Fugo and the Iranian airlines

The company added to the list of OFAC, the Treasury’s sanctions office, is Fugo Ground Services Inc. It provides ground handling and other services to US-sanctioned Iranian airlines that continue to fly to Turkey. Washington says it has direct contracts with several of them, among them Iran Air Tour, Saha Airlines, Sepehran Airlines, Varesh Airlines, Taban Airlines and Ata Airlines. For some it began providing services in the weeks after they were put on the sanctions list, on September 8.

The move follows repeated American warnings: any foreign company or individual that supports sanctioned Iranian airlines, whether through aircraft transfers, cargo services or as general sales agent, will face serious consequences. In Washington’s reasoning, Iran’s supposedly “commercial” airlines, many of them controlled by the regime and its armed forces, carry fighters, weapons and sensitive technology, as well as gold and cash, to the organisations Tehran backs. These are allegations by the US side.

Forged registries from Guyana to Eswatini

The second part concerns Sunil Kumar Sharma and his wife Jaspreet Preeti Sahid, who operated from Chandigarh, India. According to the Treasury, the couple set up websites presented as official registries or classification societies of countries such as Aruba, Guyana, Mali, Mozambique, Malawi, Sint Maarten and East Timor, without any authorisation from their governments. Their activity began as early as 2014, when they tried to impersonate the registration authority of Dominica. In 2023 Sharma founded a company in Singapore bearing the name of Eswatini, which the Eswatini authorities have publicly disowned.

Ships without valid liability insurance, evading international rules on crew safety and environmental protection: that is what false flags provide, the Treasury says. An accident with such a vessel, it warns, could cause billions of dollars of damage to the economies of the countries in whose territorial waters it operates. Besides the couple, two Indian nationals who appear as directors of Sharma’s companies were listed, along with businesses in the network. OFAC accompanied the decisions with a new advisory to the shipping industry about the sanctions risks of dealing with vessels that may fly a false flag.

Bessent announced the operation on August 24, targeting Iran’s sources of oil revenue. In the same framework Washington sanctioned, two weeks ago, a law firm with an address in Piraeus over the shadow fleet, while at the end of October Bessent argued that Iran “cannot pay its soldiers”.