Under Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil did business with Iran and Syria

Rex Tillerson.
(Image credit: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images)

While Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, was a top executive at ExxonMobil, the company did business through a European subsidiary with three countries under U.S. sanctions as state sponsors of terrorism, filings from the Securities and Exchange Commission show.

The sales were conducted by Infineum, a joint venture with Shell Corporation in which ExxonMobil owned a 50 percent stake, from 2003 to 2005, USA Today reports. Filings from 2006 show the company had $53.2 million in sales to Iran, $600,000 to Sudan, and $1.1 million to Syria over those three years. Tillerson was named senior vice president in 2001, and became president and director in March 2004 and chairman and CEO on Jan. 1, 2006.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.