OFAC Adds Three Iran Sanctions-Evasion Shipping Firms to SDN List

What happened

On 28 May 2026, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated three shipping firms as part of its Iran sanctions-evasion pressure campaign. The named entities are Agility Shipping Limited, incorporated in Hong Kong; Ever Shining Limited, based in China; and HK Yuanhang Shipping Limited, a Hong Kong company established in March 2021. All three now appear on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list.

OFAC’s action states that the firms operated as front companies, obscuring beneficial ownership to facilitate the movement of Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals in breach of US sanctions. The designations are part of OFAC’s broader Iran-related pressure campaign and were published alongside a Russia-related general licence and amended frequently asked questions on the same date.

Addition to the SDN list imposes immediate blocking obligations on US persons. Most globally connected financial institutions are also required to freeze assets, refuse transactions, and report the activity in line with their own sanctions compliance programmes.

Why it matters

The three entities follow a well-documented evasion playbook: layered corporate structures, registration across multiple jurisdictions, and beneficial ownership concealed behind nominee arrangements. Two of the three firms are registered in Hong Kong, a jurisdiction that has faced scrutiny for the ease with which shell companies can be established and used to obscure control chains. The third is based in mainland China. The geographic spread is deliberate and reflects the broader pattern OFAC has documented in Iranian petroleum evasion networks, where trade routes are fragmented across Asian ports to reduce the visibility of any single transaction.

The designations signal that OFAC is continuing to target mid-tier shipping intermediaries, not only the flag carriers or end buyers. Compliance teams at trade-finance banks, correspondent banks with Asian counterparties, and commodity traders with maritime exposure should treat this as a prompt to review the full counterparty stack, not just the named entities. HK Yuanhang Shipping Limited’s March 2021 incorporation date is also worth noting: the network was assembling new vehicles during a period of heightened sanctions pressure, a pattern consistent with deliberate structure-building in response to prior designations.

Practitioner angle

Run an immediate rescreen of all customer, counterparty, and correspondent relationships against the updated SDN list, using the exact names of all three entities as search strings. Fuzzy-match on partial transliterations of the Chinese and Hong Kong entity names, as name variants are common in maritime trade records.

Check trade-finance portfolios for letters of credit, bills of lading, and shipping guarantees linked to vessels or agents associated with these firms. HK Yuanhang Shipping Limited’s recent incorporation date makes it a candidate for vessel-agent relationships that post-date your last onboarding review. Pull vessel names and International Maritime Organization (IMO) numbers associated with all three entities and run them against your maritime screening tool.

Apply the 50 percent rule to any entity in which an SDN-designated company holds a majority ownership stake. OFAC’s 50 percent rule means that subsidiaries majority-owned by a designated party are also blocked, even if those subsidiaries do not appear by name on the SDN list. Review your correspondent and trade-finance counterparty files for any entity with a disclosed or undisclosed ownership link to Agility Shipping Limited, Ever Shining Limited, or HK Yuanhang Shipping Limited.

Escalate any positive or close matches to your sanctions officer and file a blocking report as required under your jurisdiction’s obligations. Do not release any pending transactions involving these counterparties pending investigation.

The single most urgent action: rescreen your full correspondent bank portfolio for entities domiciled in Hong Kong and China with maritime or commodity trade activity, and document the results before end of business this week.