The Iranian regime has been funnelling billions of dollars’ worth of digital assets through a fictional woman in the UK, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) revealed on Friday, following an extensive investigation.
OCCRP began investigating a woman named Elizabeth Newman (a Dominican national) who supposedly runs two UK-registered crypto exchanges, and discovered that she is a corporate fiction used as a front for a convicted embezzler whom the US has accused of moving billions of dollars’ worth of digital assets on behalf of Iran.
Newman has UK corporate records, a promotional video and a global footprint. However, despite a months-long search, OCCRP was unable to find any real-life individual matching the “Elizabeth Newman” persona.
An official Zedxion and Zedcex marketing video from March 2022 featured an image of a woman called “Elizabeth” — identified as the “executive director” – however, that woman, in fact, was a stock-footage model from a video titled “Pretty black woman talking to camera” available on Shutterstock.
Newman’s companies were listed as “dormant” in official corporate filings, but US authorities allege they were active engines for Babak Zanjani, an Iranian financier sanctioned last month for providing financial backing for major projects that support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Zanjani was sentenced to death in Iran for embezzlement of state oil funds in 2016; his sentence was commuted in 2024, and he was formally released in 2025.
UK crypto scandal: fake CEO moved $1 b. for IRGC
The US Treasury stated that he was freed to launder money for the Iranian regime, describing his two exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, both registered as US companies, as part of an operation helping the IRGC bypass sanctions, moving billions of dollars’ worth of funds through a global financial hub with total anonymity.
TRM Labs, a blockchain analytics company, said in a January report that cryptocurrencies appear to play an increasingly prominent role in the financing of the IRGC. TRM Labs also reported that Zedcex and Zedxion have processed approximately $1 billion in funds linked to the IRGC since 2023, evading international sanctions.
The two companies are also believed to be financing the Houthis in Yemen, with TRM Labs identifying transfers of over $10 million to Houthi-linked Yemeni national Sa’id Ahmad Muhammad al‑Jamal.
Additionally, since its registration in August 2022, Zedcex has processed over $94 billion in total transactions, according to the US Treasury — a fortune moved through a company that, according to UK company records, has reported doing no business at all.
TRM on-chain analysis also connects Zedcex-attributed wallets directly to wallets designated by Israeli authorities as IRGC property under Administrative Seizure Order ASO-43/25, issued by Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing on September 1, 2025.
Zedxion Exchange Ltd was founded in the UK in May 2021 by a Dutch national named Mehmet Hasancebi, according to Companies House. But five months later, the company’s directorship switched to a United Arab Emirates passport-holder named Babak Morteza, whose identifying details match those of Zanjani, according to the US Treasury, which lists Zanjani’s full name as Babak Morteza Zanjani.
Then, on August 10, 2022, Newman took over as director, according to UK company records.
Just days later, Zedcex Exchange Ltd. was incorporated at the same mass registration address, 71-75 Shelton Street in London’s Covent Garden. Newman was also named the director and person of significant control.
Since then, both crypto exchanges have filed paperwork to Companies House, claiming to be dormant.
While US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sanctioned both Zanjani and the two UK crypto exchanges on January 30, the UK has only sanctioned Zanjani.
“Taken together, the overlapping directors, shared address, mirrored filings, and coordinated timing indicate that the two entities were designed to function as a single exchange operation,” TRM Labs reported.
Under the UK’s new Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, there is to be a shift from passive record-keeping to active gatekeeping, to curb the use of “fake or stolen identities.”
The act requires all registered company directors and “persons with significant control” of a company to verify their identity with Britain’s corporate registry, Companies House, and existing directors like Newman were granted a grace period of up to a year to comply, with the two crypto exchanges’ deadline falling on May 19 this year.
However, OCCRP noted that even if “Elizabeth Newman” fails to verify her identity by the deadline of May 19 and the companies behind Zedxion and Zedcex are no longer able to operate out of the UK, “hundreds of millions of dollars are alleged to have already flowed through the digital ether on behalf of the IRGC.”
“By allowing Newman to front these entities, the UK provided a veneer of Western legitimacy to a crypto network alleged to have helped bypass global financial blockades,” the OCCRP concluded.
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