The United States earlier this week warned Hong Kong to be on alert for a vessel carrying Iranian oil that might seek to stop in the Asian financial hub, with a senior U.S. official saying any entity providing services to the vessel would be in violation of U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity told reporters on Tuesday that the tanker, the Pacific Bravo, was owned by China's Bank of Kunlun, a unit of CNPC Capital. Kunlun could not be reached for comment earlier this week.

"After our checks, the vessel Pacific Bravo (IMO: 9206035), and the goods it carries, have nothing to do with Bank of Kunlun," CNPC Capital said in an email to Reuters. It did not provide any further information.

Kunlun has been the main official channel for money flows between China and Iran since before the previous round of sanctions against Tehran began in 2012. CNPC Capital became a controlling shareholder of the bank in late 2016, according to the company's annual report.

China is the top buyer of Iranian oil and nearly all its oil payments go through Kunlun, established in 2006 as a city commercial bank in Karamay, an oil-producing hub in China's far-western Xinjiang region.

Meanwhile, the fully laden Pacific Bravo was last recorded on Thursday sailing past Sri Lanka towards the busy waterways of the Strait of Malacca, a key shipping lane to East Asia, according to ship-tracking data on Refinitiv Eikon.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu and Roslan Khasawneh; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)