By all outward appearances, Hatam Khatoun Nema was a small-time money changer working from a nondescript office in Järfälla, a workaday Stockholm suburb. In reality, the Swedish-Iranian businessman ran an obscure Hong Kong company, H M E A CO., LIMITED, that laundered hundreds of millions of dollars through a web of shell companies and businesses stretching from Singapore to Panama. A major customer of Nema’s operation was the Islamic Republic of Iran. Between 2012 and 2014, he helped move payments for the oil that Iran sold to China, its most important trading partner and geopolitical ally.
