Pair jailed in US for conspiracy to sell Iranian oil to China
- Zhenyu Wang and Daniel Ray Lane schemed with co-conspirators to evade US sanctions against Iran, US authorities said
Two Texas men convicted by a US jury in November of trying to sell Iranian petroleum in violation of sanctions imposed by Washington and of conspiracy to commit money laundering were sentenced on Tuesday to 45 months in prison, the US Justice Department said.
Zhenyu Wang, 43, a Chinese citizen, and Daniel Ray Lane, 42, of McKinney, Texas, schemed with co-conspirators to evade US economic sanctions against Iran from July 2019 to February 2020 by facilitating the purchase of sanctioned oil from Iran, masking its origins and then selling it to a refinery in China, the department said in a statement.
Lane was president of privately held Stack Royalties, a Texas-based company that sells oil and gas mineral rights to investment funds and private equity groups.
Lane’s lawyer, Paul Hetznecker, told Reuters late last year that the case was based on undercover government agents who offered Lane “millions of dollars in profits” if he took part in the scheme, after initially rebuffing their approaches.
The lawyer had called the case “an outrageous example of government overreach”.
