Despite onerous sanctions that have basically shut Iran out of the global financial system, the country is still finding some ways to bypass them, the Treasury Department said Thursday, January 10, describing what it called a small but “emerging threat” to the effectiveness of the sanctions effort, The New York Times reported. Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which supervises American enforcement of the sanctions, said the Iranians were using private exchange houses and trading companies in other countries, masking transactions with fake identities and relying on the paperless practice known as hawala, in which money is transferred informally and often illegally through trustworthy couriers. Iranian officials have increasingly acknowledged that American and European Union sanctions are causing severe financial difficulties and aggravating problems caused in part by the government’s own economic mismanagement.