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Politics, Astrophysics, Missing

Politics & Legal > Iran’s Nuclear Neg Faces Charges over Halliburto
 

Iran’s Nuclear Neg Faces Charges over Halliburto











Iran’s top nuclear negotiator faces charges over Halliburton ties PDF Print E-mail










Friday, 29 July 2005



Iran Focus


Tehran,
Iran, Jul. 29 – Iran’s judiciary has arrested several executives of a
privately-owned oil drilling company over their dealings with the
U.S.-based oil giant Halliburton and one of the country’s top nuclear
negotiators is facing charges of involvement in an oil scam, a
semi-official news agency reported.


Fars News Agency said Mehrdad Safdari, chairman of the Board of
Directors of Oriental Oil Kish, and several of his collegues are being
interrogated over the company’s trading.


A senior member of Iran’s nuclear negotiations team, Sirus Nasseri,
is the vice-chairman of the Board of Directors of the oil company. The
news agency said “a well-informed source” close to the investigation
sharply criticized Iran’s “security and political agencies” for their
“blatant weakness” in preventing Nasseri from dealing with Halliburton.


“The authorities must be particularly vigilant about the extensive
economic activities of some of the country’s officials”, he said. The
source noted that “Nasseri had access to the country’s most secret
information as a member of Iran’s nuclear negotiations team and was at
the same time dealing directly with the American company, Halliburton,
which used to be run by Dick Cheney”.


Oriental Oil Kish, one of Iran’s largest private oil companies, was
set up in 2003 with an initial capital of 10 million tomans. In a few
weeks, the company’s capital rose to 200 million dollars and soon
jumped to seven billion tomans, a startling 700 percent rise in less
than a year.


“The judiciary has been investigating this company for six months
and after the collection of sufficient information and completion of
inquiries, prosecution has begun”, Fars news agency, which is close to
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reported.


Other senior executives of the oil company facing charges include
managing director Mohammad Madani, Chief Executive Officer Ali Matin
Nejati, and operations director Ahmad Salari.


The Tehran-based daily Kayhan reported that investigators had
discovered one million dollars in cash at the home of one of the
detained oil executives. “Powerful figures have been exerting pressure
to secure his release, but Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi
has insisted that the case be prosecuted”, the daily wrote, adding that
it would uncover “a chain of corruption and embezzlement scams”.


Oriental Oil Kish first blipped on the international media’s radar
screen in January, when it was announced that the company had
subcontracted parts of the South Pars drilling project to Halliburton
Products and Services registered in the Cayman Islands.

“Nasseri, a senior Iranian diplomat negotiating with Europe over
Iran's controversial nuclear programme is at the heart of deals with US
energy companies to develop the country's oil industry”, the Financial
Times wrote.


The next day Halliburton announced the South Pars gas field project
would be its last in Iran. The BBC reported that Halliburton, which
took in $30-$40 million from Iranian operations in 2003, "was winding
down its work due to a poor business environment."


But the controversy over a key nuclear negotiator signing up big
oil contracts with a U.S. oil giant did not die down in Iran. Hard-line
members of Iran’s parliament demanded to question Nasseri over his oil
deals and an influential Tehran daily reported that the Ministry of Oil
was handing over multi-million-dollar contracts to Oriental Oil Kish
while much of the company’s operations exist only on paper.


“This company has won contracts worth more than 500 million dollars
from the Oil Ministry in the past three years, while it is not even
registered in Iran”, the daily Kayhan wrote in an editorial on January
20, 2005.


Evidence shows that Oriental Oil Kish was set up by entrepreneurs
and officials close to ex-President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Nasseri himself is a long-time protégé of Rafsanjani.


Investigators have pointed out that the company’s operational
centre in Dubai is a small office with seven, mostly Indian, employees.
Its two offices in Tehran’s Vali-Asr and Africa streets have no
signboard and have a staff of about 15 persons. The company’s
letterhead has no address and only provides one telephone number.


While there is a strong case for the prosecution of the senior
executives of Oriental Oil Kish, Iran analysts see the crackdown on the
company as a frontal assault by the ultra-conservative camp on the oil
businesses of Rafsanjani and his allies. The new hard-line
President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s top election pledge was to “purge
the country’s oil industry of Mafia-like influence and corruption”.
This was widely seen as a thinly-veiled allusion to election rival
Rafsanjani’s involvement in privately-owned oil companies in Iran.


“By targeting the private oil companies run by the Rafsanjani clan,
Khamenei is going for the ex-President’s jugular”, said Ahmad Nassehi,
a Dubai-based financial analyst. “Rafsanjani has lost much of his
political clout in the elections. If his economic power is undermined,
too, he’ll be out of the game for good”.


Analysts say the prosecution of Oriental Oil Kish executives will
provide an indication as to how far, and how high, the incoming
hard-line government is going to pursue the anti-corruption campaign.


posted on July 10, 2008 1:12 PM ()

Comments:

I cannot say I am stunned by the info, in one way, in another I am...
comment by ekyprogressive on July 11, 2008 11:01 AM ()

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