The UK's business registry has removed Zedxion Exchange from its list following allegations of handling $1 billion for Iran, exposing loopholes in the business registration system that were abused to evade sanctions.
The UK 's Companies House has officially dissolved Zedxion Exchange Ltd., citing its incorporation documents as containing "misleading, false, or deceptive" information. This decision comes less than two months after the U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) placed Zedxion and its affiliated platform Zeccex on its sanctions list for allegedly helping Iran circumvent international sanctions and for its ties to the notorious financier Babak Zanjani.
The scale of the alleged operation is considerable. According to blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs, Zedxion and Zeccex processed approximately $1 billion in funds related to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), accounting for 56% of the total volume of the two platforms.
Particularly noteworthy, that share climbed to 87% in 2024, equivalent to approximately $619 million, before declining to 48% in 2025 as other activities increased. This paints a picture of a platform that is not simply being exploited, but is almost certainly operating with the core function of evading sanctions.
Fake identities and sophisticated cover networks
Zedxion's registration records at Companies House contain a chain of suspicious identifying information. The company was incorporated in May 2021, and by October of the same year, an individual named “Babak Morteza” was listed as director and person with significant control. The identifying information in these records matches that of Babak Zanjani, an Iranian businessman who was sanctioned by the US and EU in 2013 for laundering billions of dollars in oil revenue on behalf of Iranian state entities.
After “Babak Morteza” was removed from the files in August 2022, a new director named Elizabeth Newman, described as a citizen of the Dominican Republic, was appointed to replace her. Investigators from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) subsequently determined that Newman was most likely a fictitious identity, with the profile picture in promotional materials taken from an existing photo archive.
Zanjani himself has had a particularly complex legal journey: sentenced to death in Iran in 2016 for embezzling state oil funds, a sentence later commuted in 2024 after he repaid the involved money. By 2025, he had made a public comeback with DotOne Holding Group, a conglomerate operating in the fields of cryptocurrency, foreign exchange, logistics, aviation, and telecommunications—a notable portfolio because it precisely matches the infrastructure commonly used in networks circumventing sanctions.
The incident occurred amidst Iran's increased use of cryptocurrency to circumvent sanctions. According to Chainalysis, illegal cryptocurrency addresses linked to the IRGC received at least $154 billion in digital assets over the past year, a 162% increase year-on-year. Following the coordinated US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month, approximately $10.3 million in cryptocurrency flows were recorded within three days, although the exact source remains undetermined.
On the regulatory side, Companies House is beginning to exercise expanded powers under the Economic Crimes and Transparency Act 2023. From November 2025, all directors and those with significant control at businesses registered in the UK must verify their identities, a requirement that, if implemented earlier, could have prevented Zedxion from remaining in the system for four years.
