U.S. Treasury sanctions eight Canadian businesses linked to Ryan Wedding and Iran

The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned eight Canadian businesses for allegedly helping others evade sanctions on Iran’s government. The department said the action was co-ordinated with Fintrac, Canada’s anti-money laundering watchdog, and targeted money services businesses in British Columbia and Ontario.

The Treasury said some of the sanctioned entities also worked with Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder alleged to be a drug kingpin. The department named businesses based in Ontario and British Columbia, including Million Exchange, NIA Nations Currency, Farah Exchange and Darvish Exchange, as well as several numbered companies.

The department alleges Wedding used several of the services to launder millions of dollars in drug proceeds through digital asset transfers before his arrest in January this year. In a news release, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Canada could not be a safe haven for illicit financial facilitators providing sanctions-evasion services to the Iranian regime and its proxies. He said Treasury would pursue and disrupt the regime’s financial channels around the world.

The sanctions are the latest in a series of U.S. moves to clamp down on financial transactions that evade sanctions. Wedding was arrested in Mexico in January this year and taken to the United States to face drug trafficking, murder and attempted murder charges. He remains in federal custody awaiting two trials in March and October next year.

A Mexican judge was also arrested this week on allegations of taking a $2-million bribe in exchange for granting bail to a man accused of acting as Wedding’s second-in-command.

The U.S. Department of Justice says Luis Benitez Alcantara is accused of unlawfully securing the release of Andrew Clark, a Canadian alleged to have played a key role in a violent international drug trafficking ring. Wedding is also alleged to have ordered the murders of several people, including a witness who could testify against him in a 2024 narcotics case. U.S. authorities say he had been on the run for years.

Wedding represented Canada in snowboard slalom at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Canadian and U.S. law enforcement officials allege that he became deeply involved in drug trafficking after competing at the Games. He was convicted in the United States of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and sentenced to prison in 2010. U.S. authorities allege that after his release, he resumed drug trafficking under the protection of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.

U.S. court documents say Wedding’s drug trafficking enterprise moved cocaine from Colombia into Mexico, then used semi-trailers to distribute it in the United States and Canada. Eight people were also arrested in Canada a year ago as part of the U.S. investigation into Wedding.