January 10-2014
. . . now in jail
Babak Zanjani, one of Iran’s wealthiest men, has been arrested on charges of corruption for failing to hand over to the Iranian government more than $3 billion he acknowledges owing it.
Zanjani was recruited a few years ago by the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) to use his network of contacts to market some Iranian crude oil. Zanjani said he did that successfully until tough sanctions and banking restrictions were imposed in 2012. At that point, Zanjani said, he had $3.003 billion in Iranian oil revenues in accounts he controlled abroad, but was unable to move any of the money back to Iran because of the banking restrictions. He says he still cannot move any of the money.
But Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossain Mohseni-Ejai announced last Monday that Zanjani had been arrested on corruption charges. He didn’t detail the charges. All he said was that Zanjani was detained so he would not flee the country.
Some Turkish media have implicated Zanjani in the current corruption scandal there involving gold sales. It is possible Zanjani was arrested because of some link there. However, the Turkish news reports linking Iran to the corruption scandal are short on evidence and long on speculation.
Several Majlis deputies have complained that allowing Zanjani to get his hands on that much money without first requiring collateral from him was a major error by the Ahmadi-nejad Administration. Amin-Hossain Rahimi, the head of the Supreme Audit Court, was quoted by PressTV, the English-language arm of state broadcasting, as saying Zanjani was arrested for not providing collateral. But failing to obtain collateral would be a crime by the NIOC, not Zanjani.
Zanjani was blacklisted by the EU about two years ago and by the United States last April.
Zanjani owns more than 60 businesses in Iran and abroad, much of it through his holding company, Sorinet Group. The best-known parts of his empire are Qeshm Airlines and the Rah Ahan soccer club in Tehran.
He also owns part of bank in Hong Kong, through which he reportedly channeled much of the oil money he earned through his sales for the NIOC. Zanjani claims to be worth $13.5 billion.
