A woman from Vancouver, British Columbia recently took to Indiegogo to raise funds for a trip to Iran. Alaleh Sahabi was able to reconnect with her mother through Facebook and wanted to fly back to Iran to see her for the first time in over 20 years. It seems that in using crowdfunding to fund the trip, she may have unwittingly ran into standing Iranian sanctions.
Indiegogo reached out to secure a signed document from Sahabi stating, among other things, that “No funds from the Campaign shall be used to finance travel to or activities in Iran, except as affirmatively authorized by the U.S. Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets.”
The certificate is embedded at the end of this document. At the time of writing the campaign seems to have been removed from Indiegogo’s database.
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