{"id":13874,"date":"2026-09-29T18:17:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T18:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=13874"},"modified":"2026-09-29T18:17:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T18:17:45","slug":"tether-claims-550-million-in-iran-freezes-but-35-million-slipped-past-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=13874","title":{"rendered":"Tether claims $550 million in Iran freezes, but $35 million slipped past Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Tether says it helped freeze nearly $550 million in Iran-linked USDT during 2026, while Democratic investigators on a Senate subcommittee allege that delays in blacklisting some identified wallets let tens of millions of dollars keep moving.<\/p>\n

A preliminary report released Sept. 28 by Democratic minority staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations analyzed 846 crypto wallets that US or Israeli authorities had sanctioned or targeted for seizure over their associations with Iran and regional groups. The report said 84% transacted exclusively or nearly exclusively in USDT.<\/p>\n

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat and ranking member of the subcommittee, referred the findings to the Treasury and Justice departments and asked them to investigate Tether’s anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance.<\/p>\n

The referrals do not establish that Tether violated federal law or that either department has opened a new case.<\/p>\n

Tether published its own statement the same day, saying actions involving USDT had resulted in approximately $550 million being frozen across wallets that US authorities identified as connected to Iran’s central bank and Iranian sanctions networks.<\/p>\n

The money that moved before the freeze<\/h2>\n

The Senate report’s 84% figure describes a selected population.<\/p>\n

Investigators assembled the sample from wallets identified by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing as associated with Iran or regional groups. The dataset covered over five years of designations through August 2026.<\/p>\n

For its analysis, the Senate report defined a wallet as transacting \u201cpredominantly\u201d in a digital currency when that asset represented more than 80% of the dollar value of its aggregate transactions.<\/p>\n

The number does not show what share of all USDT transactions is illicit, nor does it measure crypto’s share of Iran’s overall sanctions-evasion activity.<\/p>\n

USDT is designed to track the US dollar and can move across blockchain networks without a conventional bank transfer. However, Tether retains issuer-level controls that can blacklist addresses and prevent USDT held at them from moving.<\/p>\n

That makes the timing of a freeze the main issue for Democratic investigators.<\/p>\n

The minority staff report examined 39 wallets identified by Israel’s NBCTF in June 2023 as associated with Tawfiq Muhammad Sa’id al-Law, whom the US Treasury later sanctioned for providing financial services to Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

According to the report, five of the addresses had been blacklisted, while the remaining 34 were not frozen until March 2024. Senate investigators calculated that more than $34.6 million in USDT moved out of those wallets after the Israeli seizure notice was published and before the remaining addresses were frozen.<\/p>\n