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Iranian MPs to investigate alleged $5.3B UAE oil debt

Oil&Gas Materials 24 May 2015 15:45 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, May 24
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:

The energy commission of the Iranian parliament will investigate issues related to an alleged $5.3 billion oil debt of a United Arab Emirates company to Iran, said Amir-Abbas Soltani, a member of the commission.

"The [Iranian] oil minister believes that issues related to the $5.3 billion debt are wrong. However, if the issue is proved to be true, we will deal with it much more seriously than Babak Zanjani's case," Iran's Fars news agency quoted Soltani as saying on May 24.

"Whether he is a broker, a middleman, or an intermediate is unknown. We do not have the exact information about the UAE company's way of purchasing gas condensate consignments," Soltani noted.

The Oil Ministry has said that the UAE company has settled $3 billion of the debt, he added.

Mohsen Ghamsari, director for international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company has said that the National Iranian Oil Company sold condensates directly to the UAE without any middleman involved. "But, due to the international sanctions, the UAE could not transfer petrodollars to Iran by the end of 2013. Through adopting proper policy, $3 billion of the total money was paid in 2014."

Ghamsari denied 'emergence of another Babak Zanjani' in gas condensate sale to the United Arab Emirates.

After sanctions were imposed against the National Iranian Oil Company, Iran had to export oil and they gave Babak Zanjani the task of exporting some of this oil worth around $3 billion.

In December 2014, Zanjani was accused of initiating an illegal $5.4 billion business deal, hanging on to money from oil sales to the oil ministry and demanding that corruption charges be pursued against him.
Zanjani was arrested days later, and within a week a senior aide was also arrested.

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