US adds Almaty-based tour operator to sanctions list over Iran ties

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has added Kazakhstan-based Tour Invest LLC to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List over its links to Iranian airline Mahan Air.

The Almaty-based company was designated under U.S. counterterrorism sanctions authorities and is identified by OFAC as linked to Mahan Air. Its entry on the SDN List also carries a «secondary sanctions risk» notation.

What does Tour Invest do, and who owns it?

Almaty-based Tour Invest has operated as a small business since 2014. The company has fewer than five employees and has paid 18.2 million tenge ($40,197) in taxes. According to Adata, the company’s registration documents list tour operator services as its business activity.

The company has two co-founders:

• Ansar Duysengaliev, who is also listed as the head of Hotel Zhetisu and the Astana branch of Crystal Bay Kazakhstan;
• Ziai Babak Ali, co-owner and director of Tour Invest, who also heads the Iranian Business Center in Kazakhstan.

OFAC’s latest sanctions action covers entities in several countries, including Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the U.K. Tour Invest and several of the other newly designated entities are identified by OFAC as directly or indirectly linked to Mahan Air, an Iranian airline that previously operated direct flights to Almaty.

According to the U.S. Treasury, the broader sanctions action targets networks involved in supporting Iranian aviation. U.S. authorities say Iranian actors have relied on foreign intermediaries and complex procurement and shipping arrangements to obtain aircraft parts and other equipment while circumventing U.S. sanctions and export restrictions.