Reuters also spoke with nine Iranians who have worked for or with Nobitex. Six of the former employees interviewed by Reuters said they were aware that Nobitex was used by Iran\u2019s government and its security agencies to bypass stringent Western financial sanctions.<\/p>\n
Nobitex told Reuters there had never been any agreement with any Iranian government agency, and none of the employees interviewed by Reuters knew of one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have faced significant operational restrictions from the Iranian government, including office raids, domain blocking, and banking gateway closures,\u201d Nobitex said. \u201cThese actions are entirely inconsistent with the notion that we are receiving any form of governmental support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nobitex has publicly stated its aim is to enable Iranians to invest in crypto despite \u201cthe shadow of sanctions\u201d and advises its clients on how best to avoid their transactions being monitored or intercepted by Western governments.<\/p>\n
To hide its tracks, Nobitex changes the wallet addresses it uses for fund transfers, and has also developed cryptographic tools to further obfuscate the links between related wallets because of \u201cincreasing restrictions related to international sanctions,\u201d according to a 2021 annual report.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Nobitex advises clients to layer transactions using multiple wallet addresses to make them harder for Western investigators to track.<\/p>\n
\t During a 2025 hack\u00a0of Nobitex by the group Predatory Sparrow, about $90 million worth of cryptocurrency was sent to inaccessible wallets labelled with profane anti-IRGC names. In an indication of Nobitex\u2019s vast resources, the company and its shareholders \u2013 including the brothers \u2013 directly reimbursed customers whose money had been taken.<\/p>\n The firm has continued processing transactions throughout the war with the US and Israel that began on February 28, even during a government-imposed nationwide internet shutdown and widespread power outages in Tehran, according to three blockchain analysis firms that track activity involving Nobitex and other exchanges.<\/p>\n During that time Nobitex has processed more than $100 million in transactions, about 20% of its usual activity, according to Crystal Intelligence, which has been investigating Iranian cryptocurrency flows for more than four years.<\/p>\n Brothers concealed illustrious ties<\/p>\n Ali and Mohammad Kharrazi are the third generation of their family at the heart of Iran\u2019s ruling establishment since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Kharrazis have advised supreme leaders and occupied key political, diplomatic and religious posts.<\/p>\n The clan is related by marriage to all three supreme leaders of the Islamic Republic: the revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late Ali Khamenei, and Khamenei\u2019s son Mojtaba.<\/p>\n The brothers \u2013 using the family surname Aghamir \u2013 built Nobitex into the country\u2019s dominant cryptocurrency provider. It handles an estimated 70% of Iran\u2019s crypto transactions.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not unheard of for some Iranians to have and use alternative family names. But the brothers appear to be the only ones in their immediate family to routinely distance themselves from their famous bloodline.<\/p>\n \t Inside the company, the brothers concealed the Kharrazi name even from those closest to them, according to seven of the former employees and professional acquaintances Reuters interviewed. Some of these sources said they have known the brothers since their university days. Then, as now, they did not use the Kharrazi name.<\/p>\n Rumors about the brothers\u2019 identity emerged in 2024 when a Chinese blog reported that their father was a principal stakeholder of the crypto exchange through his son Mohammad, who was using the Aghamir surname.<\/p>\n Of the nine former employees and professional acquaintances interviewed by Reuters, only one learned of the brothers\u2019 family ties directly from them. Another said he discovered it after researching them.<\/p>\n Among those most surprised was a former coworker who counted Mohammad as a close friend of many years standing and expressed shock when Reuters disclosed the Kharrazi family connection to him.<\/p>\n \u201cI was pretty open about my criticism for the regime, and my colleagues were, too,\u201d said another former Nobitex employee. Discovering the brothers\u2019 family name \u201cmade me afraid. I did a lot of hate speech against the regime and religion.\u201d<\/p>\n Concerns among staffers about their employer\u2019s links to the government deepened after a company connected to one of Nobitex\u2019s main investors, Mohammad Bagher Nahvi, was sanctioned by the US for supplying drones to Russia, according to three former employees.<\/p>\n \t The company, Safiran Airport Services, coordinated \u201cflights between Iran and Russia, including those associated with transporting Iranian UAVs, personnel, and related equipment,\u201d the US Treasury Department said in September 2022, seven months after Russia invaded Ukraine.<\/p>\n Safiran is listed as a private company whose vice chairman is Nahvi, Nobitex\u2019s former chairman. He was one of the exchange\u2019s first and largest investors.<\/p>\n Company faced regime pressure<\/p>\n The original board of directors for Nobitex consisted of brothers Ali and Mohammad along with Amir Hosein Rad. All three studied at the elite Sharif University of Technology, Tehran\u2019s equivalent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n Rad, who is not related to the brothers, and Ali were the public faces of the company, with Rad as chief executive. Mohammad was the blockchain expert.<\/p>\n The founding brothers\u2019 elite connections did not spare the company from having to balance\u00a0competing demands of various\u00a0powerful arms of the Iranian state, said former employees interviewed by Reuters.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s central bank periodically barred exchanges including Nobitex from accessing the domestic banking system.<\/p>\n Shortly after Nobitex opened for business in 2018, the IRGC visited the firm\u2019s Tehran offices and questioned Rad, who was then CEO, three former employees said. A few years later, they swooped in again, arrested Rad, confiscated staff laptops, and sealed the office, two of the people said. There is no indication he was ever charged.<\/p>\n Explanations swirled around the office about the reason for the various IRGC visits. One of the people said they were payback for Nobitex\u2019s refusal to process IRGC funds linked to sanctioned oil sales. Two others said a jealous competitor had falsely claimed Nobitex was ripping people off.<\/p>\n In a December 2025 interview with an Iranian podcaster, Rad said his arrest in 2021 involved a misunderstanding about the relationship between Nobitex and another company with questionable business practices. Rad, who did not name the other company, described that arrest as \u201cone of the side effects of working in Iran. I think there are very few entrepreneurs in Iran who haven\u2019t experienced something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n \t The IRGC is involved in every significant facet of Iran\u2019s economy and would take a keen interest in a company as critical to the economy as Nobitex, according to a former senior US Treasury official who helped design America\u2019s Iran sanctions policy.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as a business becomes meaningfully profitable you will see the government coming in and taking its slice,\u201d said Miad Maleki, who worked in the US Treasury Department from 2017 to 2025 and was former associate director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control. He is now a senior fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t have a successful business in Iran without it being controlled by the regime,\u201d said Maleki.<\/p>\n Despite the pressure from the regime, Nobitex flourished \u2013 and with it the fortunes of the Kharrazi brothers.<\/p>\n The company moved to a flashy new office in 2021 with chill-out areas where staff could play video games, watch movies or gaze at the panoramic views of the Alborz Mountains, five of the former employees said. Their accounts matched photos posted by the company on LinkedIn. Female employees weren\u2019t required to wear headscarves, and the offices stayed open on religious holidays.<\/p>\n A home address linked to Mohammad\u2019s national ID number is in one of Tehran\u2019s wealthiest neighborhoods.<\/p>\n By the end of 2022, the exchange said it had 4.3 million users and 268 employees. Sanctions that had locked Iranians out of the global financial system turbocharged Nobitex\u2019s appeal to its Iranian clientele. Essentially, Iranians could not legally create accounts at exchanges like Binance, but they could with Nobitex, which gave them access to global crypto markets that are subject to patchy international regulation.<\/p>\n The atmosphere changed somewhat in 2022, following nationwide protests triggered by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody. Amini was arrested for allegedly violating hijab laws.<\/p>\n \t \u201cThe building\u2019s security and the morality police started controlling the hijab of female employees and threatened to seal the office,\u201d said one former employee.<\/p>\n Office dress codes were enforced more firmly after that, according to two former employees.<\/p>\n \u201cManagement became stricter about headscarves and security protocols,\u201d said one person who regularly visited Nobitex\u2019s offices and knew the founders well. \u201cUp until then the company looked like a tech start-up.\u201d<\/p>\n Obscured addresses<\/p>\n Evidence of how Nobitex fits into Iran\u2019s sanctions-evasion machinery surfaced through an unlikely source: Babak Zanjani, an Iranian billionaire convicted of fraud.<\/p>\n Zanjani has long been a key figure in Iran\u2019s sanctions-evasion networks. He was sentenced to death by Iranian authorities in 2016 for embezzlement. His sentence was commuted in 2024. But Zanjani remains locked in a public spat with Iran\u2019s central bank, which accused him of failing to repay the stolen billions.<\/p>\n In a December tirade against the central bank, Zanjani published wallet addresses on social media that enabled outside crypto analysts to uncover a complex sanctions-evasion scheme, with Nobitex at the core.<\/p>\n Part of the scheme involved moving at least $20 million in sanctioned central bank funds to wallet addresses controlled by Nobitex, according to Smart, of Crystal Intelligence, and another crypto analyst.<\/p>\n Zanjani didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n The transactions were a fraction of a larger network of wallets controlled by Iran\u2019s central bank that bought more than $500 million of cryptocurrencies between November 2024 and June 2025, according to the blockchain analysis firm\u00a0Elliptic.<\/p>\n About $347 million of that was sent by the central bank, which is sanctioned by the United States, to Nobitex in the first six months of 2025, Elliptic said.<\/p>\n Routing the money through Nobitex after a series of transactions can have the effect of blurring the source of the funds.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AP22161385849992-e1777652935409-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tIllustrative: A woman uses an ATM machine at a branch of Bank Melli Iran, at the Grand Bazaar of Tehran, Iran, on June 10, 2020. (AP Photo\/Vahid Salemi)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AP040924012970-e1777654243523-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tIran\u2019s then-Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, addresses the 59th session of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 24, 2004. (AP Photo\/Richard Drew)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AFP__20251112__83U843R__v1__HighRes__IranDefence-e1777653469522-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tIllustrative: A Shahed-161 drone is displayed during an exhibition showcasing missiles and drones in Tehran, Iran, November 12, 2025. (ATTA KENARE \/ AFP)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AP25026620956320-e1777654526812-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tIran\u2019s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, accompanied by the armed forces commanders, visits an exhibition of the Revolutionary Guard\u2019s aerospace achievements, in Iran, November 19, 2023. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AFP__20240915__36FZ482__v1__HighRes__FilesIranWomenRights-e1764310187439-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tThis UGC image posted on Twitter reportedly on October 26, 2022 shows an unveiled woman standing on top of a vehicle as thousands make their way towards Aichi cemetery in Saqez, Mahsa Amini\u2019s hometown in the western Iranian province of Kurdistan, to mark 40 days since her death in morality police custody. (UGC \/ AFP)<\/p>\n
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