An unknown Chinese bank at the center of the flow of money from Russia and Iran -. The Wall Street Journal. Part 2/2 U.S. sanctions have limited the ability of Iranian and Russian companies to buy and sell goods abroad, so they have largely stopped trading with the West, purchasing goods from Chinese suppliers instead. To pay them, they have to find a bank willing to accept the funds, which could result in US sanctions against that institution. This is where banks like Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank (ZCCB) come into play. In February 2025, the now-defunct company in Kyrgyzstan agreed to pay a Chinese supplier about $1.5 million for 40,000 kilograms of molybdenum trioxide, according to an invoice seen in the publication. Molybdenum trioxide is a metal compound that can be used to make strong, heat-resistant alloys used in armored vehicles or rocket engines. According to the invoice, the cargo was supposed to be delivered by truck from China to St. Petersburg.
According to payment documents reviewed by the Journal, the buyer, identified as Kyrgyz Republic Trading Company, paid for the shipment in two installments, which were to be credited to the supplier's ZCCB account. American officials call the Kyrgyz company one of hundreds of front companies of the Russian A7 network, which deal with the circumvention of sanctions. The invoices and payment documents were part of a series of internal A7 files that were made public after hackers attacked the Russian network and published correspondence between its employees. This correspondence led investigators to an unprotected drive on which the A7 developer had left thousands of files publicly available online. Of the approximately 3,500 transactions detailed in the A7 documents, ZCCB was the most likely to be the bank receiving the payments.