U.S. Treasury sanctions Canadian firms connected to Ryan Wedding

OTTAWA – The United States Treasury Department has slapped sanctions on eight Canadian businesses for allegedly helping to evade sanctions on Iran’s government.

The department says it sanctioned money services businesses in British Columbia and Ontario in co-ordination with Fintrac, Canada’s anti-money laundering watchdog.

The U.S. Treasury said several of the entities being sanctioned also worked with Ryan Wedding, the alleged drug kingpin and former Canadian Olympic snowboarder.

The department names several companies based in Ontario and British Columbia, including the Million Exchange, NIA Nations Currency, Farah Exchange, Darvish Exchange and several numbered companies.

The department alleges that Wedding used several of these services to launder millions of dollars in drug money through the transfer of digital assets before he was arrested in January.

“Canada cannot be a safe haven for illicit financial facilitators that provide sanctions-evasion services to the Iranian regime and its proxies,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a news release. 

“Treasury will pursue and disrupt the Iranian regime’s financial channels anywhere in the world.”

The sanctions are the latest in a series of moves by the United States to clamp down on financial transactions evading sanctions as it continues its war with Iran.

Wedding was arrested in Mexico in January this year and taken to the United States to face drug trafficking, murder and attempted murder charges. 

He remains in federal custody awaiting two trials in March and October of next year.

A Mexican judge was arrested this week on allegations that he accepted a $2-million bribe in exchange for granting bail to a man accused of acting as second-in-command to Wedding.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Luis Benitez Alcantara is accused of unlawfully securing the release of Andrew Clark, a Canadian man alleged to have played a key role in a violent international drug trafficking ring.

Wedding is alleged to have ordered the murders of several people, including a witness who could testify against him in a 2024 narcotics case.

U.S. authorities have said Wedding had been on the run for years.

Wedding represented Canada in a snowboarding slalom during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Canadian and American law enforcement officials allege that after competing in the Olympics, he became deeply involved in drug trafficking.

He was convicted in the United States of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to prison in 2010. U.S. authorities have alleged that after Wedding’s release from prison, he resumed drug trafficking under the protection of the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.

U.S. court documents said Wedding’s drug trafficking enterprise brought cocaine from Colombia into Mexico, then used semi-trailers to distribute the drug in the United States and Canada.

Eight people were also arrested in Canada a year ago as part of the U.S. investigation of Wedding.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2026.

— With files from Paola Loriggio in Toronto