Investigation Links Nobitex Founders to Khamenei Family

A May 1 investigation found that Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was founded in 2018 by two brothers from the Kharrazi family who registered the firm under the surname Aghamir Mohammad Ali. The exchange processed cryptocurrency flows for sanctioned Iranian institutions, including the Central Bank of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but has not been placed on Western sanctions lists.

Analysts traced the family link using corporate filings, domain registration records and banking data. The email used to register Nobitex’s domain in 2017 included the Kharrazi name and was tied to a religious charity run by the brothers’ father. The brothers’ grandfather served on the Assembly of Experts and reportedly tutored Mojtaba Khamenei. Their father, Ayatollah Bagher Kharrazi, founded an Iranian political group called Hezbollah and helped staff the IRGC after the 1979 revolution. The Kharrazi family is related by marriage to all three of Iran’s supreme leaders. Nobitex’s co-founder and CEO, Amir Hosein Rad, is not part of that family.

Blockchain analytics firms produced divergent totals for suspect transactions linked to the exchange. One firm identified roughly $366 million in questionable flows, another estimated about $68 million, and a third put direct transfers from sanctioned wallets at about $22 million. One analytics group also identified about $347 million in transfers from wallets tied to the Central Bank of Iran to Nobitex in the first half of 2025. Analysts noted tracing complex crypto networks can miss layered transfers and off-chain movements.

An early backer, Mohammad Bagher Nahvi, was linked to Safiran Airport Services, a company sanctioned in September 2022 over its role coordinating flights tied to Iranian drone shipments to Russia. Open-source researchers had earlier flagged shareholder ties between Nobitex and figures connected to Iran’s political leadership; the investigation attached specific names to those findings.

During an internet shutdown imposed in February 2026 at the start of the recent conflict, Nobitex reportedly remained operational. One analytics firm said more than $100 million moved through the exchange during the period, about one-fifth of normal volume, and about $54 million was withdrawn after hostilities began. NetBlocks estimated that only 1 to 2 percent of Iranians retained internet access via a government-controlled whitelist, and Nobitex was on that whitelist.

On April 28, U.S. Treasury officials announced sanctions targeting what they described as Iran’s shadow banking infrastructure; Nobitex and members of the Kharrazi family were not included. Senator Elizabeth Warren called the investigation “a flashing red light,” warning that digital assets are being used by adversarial states to move money outside traditional finance.

Nobitex issued a statement denying government affiliation, saying the platform “has never been an arm of the government” and that illicit transactions represent a small share of activity that took place without management’s knowledge. The company said it serves about 11 million users and handles roughly 70 percent of crypto transactions in Iran. Prior reporting showed that Binance handled about $7.8 billion in transactions for users of the exchange despite existing U.S. sanctions.

The investigation names individuals and provides transaction estimates that were not previously public.