The five, including one Swedish-Iranian dual national, were arrested when authorities raided the direct-sale cosmetic company’s Tehran office August 22.
Authorities shut the office amid loud allegations that it was running a pyramid scheme. There was also talk that it might be linked to a foreign spy agency and allegations it was involved in pornography, based on the photos of European women modeling its cosmetics that appeared in its literature. Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi accused the firm of trying to harm Iran’s security.
A national campaign against Oriflame moved into high gear. But after a few weeks, the story and the allegations just dried up, as often happens in Iran, and nothing more was heard.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry said in November the Swedish-Iranian employee—who had been charged with establishing a pyramid scheme and deriving illegal earnings—had been released and left Iran.
The company said at the time that he was the fourth of its staffers to be freed. Now the fifth and last is out of jail.
The Swedish business daily Dagens Industri (DI) reported last Wednesday that it was now clear Oriflame, which entered the Iranian market in 2006 but had been considering leaving the country, would shut down its activities in Iran.
“The conditions for us to continue our activities there don’t exist,” DI quoted Patrik Linzenbold, Oriflame’s director of investor relations, as saying.
Oriflame is a direct-sales—that is, door-to-door—cosmetics firm. It appears that business model—with Iranians working for foreigners knocking on doors all around the country—raised suspicions among the easily suspicious officials of the Intelligence Ministry.
“Oriflame intended to fight the [Iranian] system. There are no economic reasons behind the company,” Intelligence Minister Moslehi told Tehran reporters in August.
