Press Releases
Treasury Targets Vessels Delivering Oil Derivatives to the Houthis
April 28, 2025
WASHINGTON — Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is targeting three vessels and their owners for providing support to Ansarallah, commonly known as the Houthis, which is part of the Iranian regime’s network of terrorist proxies and partners. The group has deployed missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and naval mines to attack commercial shipping interests in the Red Sea, threatening global freedom of navigation and the integrity of international commerce. The Houthis also profit significantly from the shipment of goods through ports they control, profiting, in particular, from the discharge of refined petroleum products.
“Today’s action underscores our commitment to disrupt the Houthis’ efforts to fund their dangerous and destabilizing attacks in the region,” said Deputy Secretary of...
1) See Treasury Targets Vessels Delivering Oil Derivatives to the Houthis (Press Release) (entities designated for acting outside scope of wind down GL). This appears to be the first time ever that OFAC has designated an entity while explicitly noting that the conduct resulting the designation qualified for a recently expired wind down GL (“Maisan finished discharging its cargo and departed Ras Isa on April 8, four days after the expiration of OFAC’s GL 25A”). Designations for transactions that do not qualify for a wind down GL but would have qualified for wind down GLs for U.S. persons when such GLs were still valid are extremely rare, and here OFAC explicitly calls out the fact that an otherwise applicable wind down GL was valid just four days prior to the sanctionable conduct taking place. The unusual step taking in this...