Days after its offshore bank link made headlines, Tether reminds the US it froze $550 million in Iranian USDT

Tether says it has frozen about $550 million in USDT linked to Iran’s Central Bank this year, in an announcement published days after reports tied the stablecoin issuer to EQIBank, the offshore bank at the center of an $84.2 million US forfeiture case.

The announcement also emphasized Tether’s broader cooperation with law enforcement, saying the company has supported more than 2,900 investigations globally, including more than 1,600 involving US authorities.

The timing is notable.

Tether’s announcement comes three days after reports revealed that it held assets at EQIBank, whose US payment intermediary, Capstone Limited, is facing a federal civil forfeiture action over approximately $84.2 million in bank and cryptocurrency assets. Tether has said its EQIBank exposure is less than 0.034% of its group assets and that it had no knowledge of the conduct prosecutors allege against Capstone.

Tether’s latest announcement does not mention Capstone or EQIBank.

Instead, it puts the spotlight on a different part of the company’s relationship with US authorities: its ability to freeze USDT when law enforcement identifies wallets connected to sanctions evasion, fraud or other illicit activity.

Tether points to $550 million in Iran-linked freezes

Tether said more than $344 million in USDT was frozen in April across two addresses after the company received information from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control and US law enforcement.

The following day, OFAC formally added those same addresses as digital currency identifiers for Iran’s Central Bank. The Treasury designation links the bank to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and Hezbollah, according to the sanctions agency.

A further freeze followed in July.

Tether said more than $130 million in USDT across four wallets was frozen after the US Treasury expanded the Central Bank of Iran designation to include four additional TRON addresses.

Together, Tether says those actions account for approximately $550 million in Iran-linked USDT frozen during 2026.

The disclosure comes as the US Treasury intensifies its sanctions campaign against Iran.

Treasury launched Operation Economic Outcast on August 24, describing it as a campaign designed to sever financial networks supporting the Iranian regime and its enablers. Treasury has subsequently targeted Iranian-linked financial institutions and digital-asset infrastructure, including BitBank, an exchange it says is controlled by Iranian financier Babak Zanjani.

Tether’s announcement therefore arrives amid an active US effort to identify and disrupt Iran-linked financial channels rather than in isolation from the broader sanctions campaign.

The announcement comes as Tether faces questions over Capstone

The Iran announcement follows a very different story about Tether’s financial infrastructure.

US prosecutors are seeking forfeiture of approximately $84.2 million in assets seized from accounts linked to Capstone Limited, a payment company that prosecutors allege operated an unlicensed money-transmission business and misrepresented its activities to US banks.

The property includes approximately $79.1 million from a Wells Fargo Securities account, $1.86 million from another Wells Fargo account, $2.06 million at JPMorgan Chase and roughly 1.18 million USDT across two cryptocurrency addresses.

The connection to Tether runs through EQIBank.

Tether confirmed last week that EQIBank processed wire transfers connected to purchases and redemptions of USDT. EQIBank, in turn, relied on Capstone to hold and move funds through US banking relationships.

The government alleges that Capstone moved hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of other parties and operated without required money-transmission licenses. Reporting based on the government’s complaint has identified Tether and affiliated exchange Bitfinex among the businesses for which Capstone allegedly processed payments.

Tether has rejected any implication that it knew about the alleged conduct.

The company said its assets at EQIBank represented less than 0.034% of total group assets, while the $84.2 million targeted in the forfeiture case has not been identified by the court as Tether’s property.

That means the Capstone case does not establish that Tether lost $84.2 million.

But it has exposed another question around the world’s largest stablecoin: how much of the financial infrastructure supporting USDT depends on intermediaries that users rarely see?

And that question emerged just before Tether published its new Iran-focused announcement.

Tether’s latest message emphasizes law enforcement cooperation

The September 28 announcement is unusually heavy on enforcement statistics.

Tether said it works with more than 340 law-enforcement agencies across 67 countries, supporting more than 2,800 investigations and helping freeze more than $4.9 billion in assets, including more than $2.4 billion connected to US authorities.

The company specifically named the Department of Justice, FBI, Secret Service, Homeland Security Investigations and OFAC among the US agencies with which it works.

Tether also pointed to several recent cases.

In February, federal agents seized more than $61 million in USDT connected to an alleged cryptocurrency investment-fraud operation. The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina publicly acknowledged Tether for helping transfer the assets.

Earlier this month, the DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force said it had restrained more than $52 million in cryptocurrency linked to Xinbi Guarantee, an alleged Chinese-language marketplace serving scam operators. The DOJ specifically thanked Tether for its proactive assistance. The Bit Gazette previously reported Tether’s role in the $52 million Xinbi action.

The company has also recently frozen funds connected to the Bitget security incident. The Bit Gazette reported that Tether froze 218,000 USDT linked through three transaction steps to the $351.6 million Bitget theft.

Those interventions illustrate a genuine feature of Tether’s business model: the issuer can restrict the movement of USDT in wallets it controls when credible information about illicit activity reaches it.

The Iran-related freezes are another example.

But the Capstone question remains separate

Tether’s ability to freeze USDT is not the same issue as the banking dispute now involving Capstone.

In the Iran cases, Tether says it acted after receiving information from US authorities and used its control over the USDT token to restrict identified wallets.

The Capstone case concerns the fiat side of the stablecoin ecosystem: bank accounts, payment processing and the intermediaries that move dollars between financial institutions and crypto businesses.

That distinction is important.

Tether’s new announcement demonstrates how useful a centralized stablecoin can be to law enforcement when investigators identify suspicious blockchain addresses.

The Capstone case, meanwhile, has raised questions about what happens several steps away from the blockchain — when the dollars connected to crypto transactions move through offshore banks and US payment companies.

The two stories therefore tell different parts of the same financial system.

Tether’s announcement argues that USDT transactions are increasingly visible to authorities and can be frozen when investigators identify illicit activity.

The Capstone case shows that the banking relationships supporting those transactions can still become entangled in investigations of their own.

For now, there is no evidence that Tether participated in the conduct alleged against Capstone, and the US government has not established that the $84.2 million under forfeiture belongs to Tether.

But the timing of the company’s latest announcement puts its law-enforcement cooperation back at the center of the conversation just days after its banking relationships came under scrutiny.

See Full Announcement Here.