How a Shadow Oil Empire Helps Iran’s Regime Cling to Power | Bloomberg Investigates

Iran experienced a revolution in 1979 against corruption, repression, and inequality that led to the birth of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Over the next four decades following 1979, a new military and political class emerged in Iran in the face of mounting Western sanctions.

Bloomberg reporting revealed that an elite operating under the code name 'H' became a power broker in the world's shadow economy.

The secretive network uncovered by Bloomberg was one of the three biggest oil trading networks for Iran.

The network generated tens of billions of dollars in value.

Oil was discovered in Iran in 1908.

Paul Grimm, a 56-year-old American oil executive, was ambushed and killed by three assassins with machine guns on his way to work in Iran during the revolution.

Ali Shamkhani was among Mansouroun's members.

Ali Shamkhani joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a new military force set up to protect the new Iranian regime.

The Iran-Iraq War started a year after the Islamic Republic was established.

In 2008, Ali Shamkhani introduced one of his sons, Hossein Shamkhani, on national television.

Ben Bartenstein, a senior reporter on the energy and commodities team at Bloomberg, investigated the network.

In early November 2023, Ben Bartenstein was at an event in Dubai and learned about a secretive company run by the son of a prominent IRGC commander that was active in trading oil.

The company Milavous Group operates from offices in Dubai, Switzerland, and Romania and openly trades in oil and other products.

The code names used for the owner of Milavous Group were 'H' or 'Hector.'

Russia needs to sell oil to get money to fund the war and needs dual use goods such as microchips, infrared sensors, and gyroscopes for missiles used to attack Ukraine.

Had the hedge fund stayed operating, this network could have kept churning out 15 to $20 billion a year in oil revenue and then turned those tens of billions of dollars into hundreds of billions of dollars.