Iran’s oil trustees face questions over billions in unpaid sales revenue

Iran’s oil intermediaries, known as trustees, owed the government between €10 billion and €11 billion from oil sales, an Iranian judiciary spokesperson said in September, according to an Al Jazeera report published on 12 October. The figure has raised questions about how Iran collects revenue from crude sold through a network of institutions, companies and individuals while under sanctions.

Al Jazeera put the sum at about $11 billion to $12 billion and said it was roughly half the oil revenue projected in Iran’s government budget for the current fiscal year. The report did not provide the budget calculation or a published ledger behind the judiciary spokesperson’s estimate. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Radio Farda programme separately described more than $11 billion in Iranian oil revenue as missing in a September report.

How Iran’s oil trustees handle sales

The trustees are entrusted with crude to sell on the state’s behalf, with proceeds expected to reach the treasury. They can include institutions, individuals and companies. The arrangement also allows recipients to recover agreed costs or claims. That structure makes an outstanding balance different from a single, fully documented case of stolen money: the reported total includes unpaid proceeds, disputed financial obligations and allegations of corruption.

Al Jazeera traces the system to 2012, when sanctions restricted Iran’s ability to sell oil through its Oil Ministry and collect proceeds through the Central Bank. The government also used crude to settle obligations to other bodies. Those recipients could sell their allocations themselves or employ private trading companies, adding another step between an oil shipment and a payment to the state.

Why the outstanding amounts accumulated

According to Al Jazeera, gaps between expected sale revenue and deposits emerged early in the trustee arrangement, and recovering funds remained difficult until sanctions relief began in 2016. The United States withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018, after which Iran again relied on private traders. The report describes delays, accounting discrepancies, outstanding debts and occasional seizures of Iranian oil shipments as problems for revenue management.

US sanctions also reached banks, currency exchanges, companies and individuals involved in Iranian government transactions, Al Jazeera reported. Traders’ accounts or assets could be blocked or frozen, creating obstacles to sending sale proceeds back. The report says Iran responded by involving more people in oil trading and allocating smaller volumes to each person or company, a change it says increased the risk of proceeds not being returned.

Radio Farda’s September account independently described trustees selling oil and other goods abroad while bypassing sanctions. Its accessible report, however, did not provide a documentary breakdown of the more than $11 billion it described as missing or detailed responses from the intermediaries. The two accounts establish the scale of the reported problem, but neither supplies a transaction-by-transaction reconciliation available to readers.

What remains unresolved about the debt

Al Jazeera reported that Iran’s judiciary chief warned oil sellers who refused to return proceeds that they could face legal action. That warning does not establish that every outstanding sum has been adjudicated or that every trustee accused of owing money has withheld it deliberately. The reports do not separate legally established debts from contested obligations, identify all the intermediaries involved or say how much has since been recovered.

The distinction matters for assessing the headline figure. A delayed transfer caused by a frozen account, a disputed claim against the state and money withheld without justification could all appear in an account of outstanding proceeds while requiring different explanations. The published accounts attribute the €10 billion to €11 billion estimate to the judiciary spokesperson; they do not provide an independent audit that resolves those categories.

For now, the available reporting leaves two questions open: which trustees account for the stated balance, and what portion can still be returned to Iran’s treasury. Answering them would require a fuller accounting of the sales, transfers, offsets and recoveries than appears in the published reports. The judiciary figure is a statement about an outstanding amount, not a verified measure of permanent loss.