to an Iranian deputy foreign minister and six other Iranian government employees in order to win a cellphone contract for South Africa’s MTN company.
Chris Kilowan, who was MTN’s representative in Iran, declined to name the other six Iranians he said he bribed. But he named the deputy foreign minister as Javid Ghorbanoghli, a reformist politician who had previously been Iran’s 
The Sunday Times of South Africa reported that Kilowan also testified that he used a $200,000 slush fund to pay six Iranian state employees to spy on the Iranian government and keep him informed about what was happening on the cellphone issue.
“I did in fact engage six people . . . to gather information and we paid them … from the MTN bank account in Tehran,” Kilowan said.
Kilowan testified last month to a US court in Washington, DC, that is hearing a suit filed by Turkcell, Turkey’s largest cellphone firm, against MTN, Africa’s largest cellphone firm. Turkcell originally won 
Kilowan said the Iranian government wanted to buy lots of South African weapons and sought MTN’s help. In the end, that fell apart and no arms were sold to Iran. Iran also wanted help in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with the nuclear issue. It agreed to issue MTN the contract it wanted—but it pointedly held up the paperwork until after South Africa abstained on a vote against Iran in the IAEA.
Kilowan is helping Turkcell in its suit. In fact, it appears there would be no case if Kilowan had not taken 7,000 pages of MTN 
Turkcell is seeking $4.2 billion in damages from MTN.
Reuters last week said it had reviewed the entire transcript of Kilowan’s testimony, most of which has not been made public, as well as numerous other documents collected by Kilowan.
Kilowan’s story began in 2004 when MTN sent him to Iran. MTN had seemingly lost out to Turkcell for the license to launch Iran’s second cellphone operation. Kilowan testified he began meeting with Iranian officials to determine what had gone wrong with MTN’s bid and lay the groundwork for competing for a license to run a third carrier. At the time, Iran had just one mobile operator, the state-owned Telecommunication Co. of Iran.
Kilowan said he learned from South African Ambassador Yusuf Saloojee, who recently had arrived in Tehran, that MTN shouldn’t give up on pursuing the second license even though it appeared Turkcell had won. It also soon became clear to Kilowan that if MTN was going to undo Turkcell’s victory, it would have to meet a long and growing list of Iranian demands.
The bidding rules required foreign companies to partner with Iranian entities. Turkcell’s partners had included Sairan, an arms manufacturer owned by Iran’s Ministry of Defense, and Bonyad-e Mostazafan, a foundation that comes under the direction of the Supreme Leader.
Reuters reports that Kilo-wan portrayed Sairan and Bonyad-e Mostazafan, which eventually teamed up with MTN, as manipulative and untrustworthy, and later wrote in an internal memo that MTN’s desire for the license “should not blind us to the clear reality that we are not negotiating with honest partners.”
Kilowan said he and two South African diplomats held an initial meeting around March 2004 with a Sairan official, who complained that South Africa had failed to deliver military radios Iran had purchased a year earlier. “You should push your government that they must sell these things to us,” Kilowan quoted the Sairan official as saying. “I said, ‘Okay, I will. I will talk to my people, and they will talk to the government.’”
Kilowan testified that during meetings, officials from Sairan and government agencies repeatedly raised two requirements: their need to acquire military hardware, including drone aircraft, and to win support for Tehran’s nuclear development program.
According to Kilowan, MTN then set out to provide the Iranians access to high-level South African government officials. This included helping arrange a visit to Iran by South Africa’s then defense minister, Mosiuoa Lekota, to meet his Iranian counterpart.
Lekota visited Iran in August 2004, accompanied by MTN’s president. “It was specifically arranged so as to prove to the Iranians that MTN can deliver on the defense matters,” said Kilowan.
According to Kilowan, Ambassador Saloojee later showed him a wish list of arms the Iranians wanted to buy from South Africa. The shopping list included radar systems, armored personnel carriers, long-range cannons and the Rooivalk attack helicopter. Kilowan testified that Saloojee told him, “They want everything from the earth to the sea, and everything that is in the sea and everything that flies.”
Kilowan said Iranian officials also directly told him they wanted help in acquiring military equipment, including helicopters and drone aircraft. “We were not promising to facilitate the arm sales,” Kilowan testified. “We were promising to get them in front of the right people for these arm sales. And if there are any bottlenecks, we would talk to the minister, for example.”
The memos make mincemeat of repeated Iranian claims to have mastered all sorts of military technology so as not to require military imports,
Reuters reports that Turkcell’s documents also include an alleged fax to an Iranian official from Donald Ramfolo, then a regional marketing manager for the Denel company, a major South African arms maker.
In an interview with Reuters, Ramfolo said Denel had proposed selling Iran “aviation technology,” including fiberglass technology for drones, but MTN wasn’t involved and the South African government nixed the deal. “We were doing our own thing and MTN were doing their own thing and we didn’t mix,” he said.
In the end, South Africa never delivered any arms. In the case of the attack helicopters, Kilowan testified that Ambassador Saloojee told him South Africa wouldn’t sell them to Iran because they contained some American technology, which was under sanctions. Kilowan said the failure to deliver the arms resulted in continued friction between MTN and the Iranians.
MTN was pressed to deliver in other ways. On the nuclear front, Kilowan testified that MTN helped pay for a trip to South Africa around late 2004 by Iran’s then-chief nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rohani, so he could meet with then-President Thabo Mbeki.
“We paid for the hotels in Cape Town. We paid for the dinners, everything. We bought presents for them. And we made sure that he got to see President Thabo Mbeki,” Kilowan testified.
According to Kilowan, MTN was promised the telecom license in November 2005. But when he arrived to pick it up, he said an Iranian official told him that it couldn’t be issued until a vote later that week at the Intrenational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. The Board of Governors, on which South Africa served, was considering whether to refer Iran, which had resumed enriching uranium, to the UN Security Council for what would be the first UN sanctions on Iran.
South Africa abstained. Two days later, Kilowan testified, an Iranian government official “called me and said we can come and get the license.”
Kilowan testified that although MTN couldn’t claim credit for the abstention, “we essentially put a lot of pressure” on the government.
By the time MTN received the license to launch the new company, called MTN Irancell, it had made a series of concessions to its Iranian partners.
Although MTN owned 49 percent of the joint venture, it agreed to put up 100 percent of the licensing fee and capitalization costs—450 million euros ($570 million). By Kilowan’s account, the Iranians essentially tricked MTN into signing a document in Farsi that committed it to paying all its partners’ share.
Over the objection of MTN’s chief financial officer, Rob Nisbet, MTN structured its additional contribution as a complex series of loans, Kilowan testified. Kilowan said he also objected to the loan arrangement. In a confidential October 2005 memo to MTN’s CEO that was reviewed by Reuters, Kilowan wrote, “They have no intention whatsoever to repay the money that they want us to advance them.”
He also wrote, “I have now arrived at the conclusion … that the primary reason they have shifted to MTN is because they have concluded that we are desperate enough for this license that we will give anything.”
MTN’s financial statements show that the loans, originally supposed to be repaid by 2009, were renegotiated and extended. The company recently reported that three of four loans were repaid last year, with the fourth extended until 2014.
Among Kilowan’s most serious allegations is that MTN paid a series of bribes, including to Javid Ghorbanoghli, an Iranian deputy foreign minister who had once served as Iran’s ambassador to South Africa. Kilowan also alleges that payments were made to Ambassador Saloojee and six Iranian government employees he declined to name.
At a meeting at Kilowan’s Tehran house in May 2005, Kilowan testified that his boss, Irene Charnley, visiting from South Africa, told Ghorbanoghli: “Look, we are now entering a very delicate phase. We would really appreciate all your assistance that you can give us. And, of course, when we get the license we will be very happy to thank you in the appropriate way for your assistance.”
Within months, Kilowan said, Ghorbanoghli began asking him about “compensation.” Kilowan said he and Charnley agreed to hold off on any payments until after MTN received the license.
After the license was issued, Charnley suggested Saloojee also should be paid for assisting MTN, Kilowan testified.
Charnley denied all this, telling Reuters, “I didn’t bribe anyone, I’m not aware of anyone having been bribed, and I wouldn’t have tolerated any bribery had I been aware of it.”
According to Kilowan, Ghorbanoghli grew agitated in 2006 over not having been paid, saying he needed money to buy a house for his children in South Africa. Kilowan said he and Charnley decided to pay him by awarding a consulting contract to an oil services company in Dubai owned by one of Ghorbanoghli’s friends.
Turkcell’s evidence includes a copy of an agreement signed by Kilowan on behalf of MTN, to pay $400,000 to Aristo Oil International Services for “consulting and support—Iran license.”
Ghorbanoghli later confirmed the money had arrived, Kilowan testified. “He wanted more, and I negotiated it down to 400,000,” he said.
Ghorbanoghli held his ambassadorial and deputy foreign minister portfolios under the Khatami Administration. He later left the governmment and in the 2009 presidential election was a major figure organizing the campaign of Mir-Hossain Musavi.
As for Saloojee, Kilowan testified that the ambassador approached him after learning that Ghorbanoghli had been paid. Saloojee said he needed money to buy a house in Pretoria, Kilowan said.
Kilowan testified that MTN delayed making the payment so he ended up giving Saloojee $200,000 of his own money in April 2007, through the ambassador’s attorneys, with a handshake agreement that Saloojee would repay him when MTN sent the cash.
MTN never did. Kilowan, who left MTN in late 2007 and is now a Dubai-based businessman, testified that he continued through early 2011 to try to recoup his money from Saloojee and MTN. When the company turned him down, he said, he decided to go to Turkcell.
He testified he does not stand to benefit from the case’s outcome, other than travel expenses and compensation for time spent on his deposition and “loss of business.” He also said he bills Turkcell an hourly rate for reviewing documents in a separate arbitration case, and has received about $21,800 over the past year. As a result of this disclosure, MTN, which is trying to dismiss Turkcell’s lawsuit in the United States, recently called his testimony “paid evidence.”
Meanwhile, MTN Irancell has become Iran’s fastest-growing mobile phone operator. MTN recently reported it had 45 percent of the Iranian market.