Iranian ambassador to Kenya Hadi Farajvand is in the eye of the authorities over reports that he is involved in gold smuggling from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ghana.
The envoy is in the spotlight over the movement of unusually huge amounts of money which pointed to the illicit gold trade, which Kenyan authorities now believe is conducted for personal gain.
The ambassador has been trading under the auspices of a firm known as Relix Mining which started operations late last year.
“The huge cash transfers are what alerted Kenyan authorities,” said an official familiar with the government reports on the envoy but who could not be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
The trade would be in violation of sanctions imposed by the US government against Iran in November last year. The US has sanctioned Iran over its activities in Syria and elsewhere around the world.
The US Treasury’s imposition of unprecedented financial pressure on Iran should make clear to the Iranian regime that they will face mounting financial isolation and economic stagnation until they fundamentally change their destabilising behaviour.
Iran’s leaders must cease support for terrorism, stop proliferating ballistic missiles, end destructive regional activities, and abandon their nuclear ambitions immediately if they seek a path to sanctions relief,” said Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin when he announced the sanctions last year.
Iran was last year in the Kenyan headlines after it emerged that Kenyan security forces were on high alert following intelligence reports that some Iranian operatives had allegedly sneaked into East Africa to try to rescue terrorism convicts of Iranian origin jailed in Kenya.