The U.S. Treasury Department has designated A7, a Russia-linked payment network founded to evade sanctions, as a “significant transnational criminal organization”. The action will bar U.S. financial institutions from making transfers involving the network’s “Sub-Agents”, foreign shell companies that process payments for clients in Russia.
The restrictions were formally imposed within sanctions targeting Iran. The Treasury Department said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and central bank had used A7’s services.
A7 was launched in 2024 by the Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor. Russia’s Promsvyazbank took part in the network, which consists of hundreds of companies in third countries handling payments for Russian clients.
The designation extends earlier U.S. measures against the network. The Russian company A7 itself and A7A5, the ruble-denominated stablecoin created by A7, have been under U.S. sanctions since August 2025.
A7 processed 7.5 billion rubles in payments in the first half of 2025. The Treasury Department’s latest action focuses on the foreign corporate intermediaries described as Sub-Agents, whose identities have not been fully specified.
The available information does not set out how A7 coordinates payments among its hundreds of companies. It also does not establish the full range of the network’s clients beyond the Iranian entities named by the Treasury Department, or the likely effect of the new restrictions on A7’s operations.
The designation places the network’s foreign intermediaries within the reach of restrictions on U.S. financial transfers. It also ties action against a Russia-linked payment system to the wider sanctions programme targeting Iran.
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