Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug.3
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: Iran Police Force hasn't paid $170 million debt to Oil Ministry after selling two consignments of crude oil in 2012, Iran's ISNA news agency reported on August 3.
This is while Mohsen Qamsari, director for international affairs of National Iranian Oil Company, said last month that the Police Force has seemingly not managed to sell the oil consignments.
Last year, Iran's police chief Esmaeil Ahmadi Moqaddam said former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had entrusted the police force with selling an oil consignment.
On Jan. 30, Ahmadi Moqaddam said the police force owed $185 million to the oil ministry for selling crude oil, and the debt had been planned to be settled this year.
According to reports, the National Iranian Oil Company entrusted a company affiliated with the police force with selling 1.639 million barrels of oil in the past Iranian year 1391 (March 2012-March 2013).
Reportedly, another company, owned by Iranian billionaire Babak Zanjani, also owes to the NIOC for selling oil and gas.
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh urged the country's National Police Forces on February 1 to pay its debts to the oil ministry, Iran's Mehr News Agency reported.
"The police owe over $180 million to the oil ministry," Zanganeh explained.
Previously the chief of Iran's National Police Forces, Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghaddam, told the country's ISNA News Agency that the previous administration had paid for the 11 percent budget deficit of the police forces with an oil consignment.
He went on to note that while everybody is trying to find a way to bypass the sanctions imposed on the country, it is not correct to reveal the solutions.