Tehran, Iran, Oct.20.
Trend:
Referring to the true story of Babak Zanjani, the Ex-chairman of the union of Iranian exporters of oil derivatives claimed in a conference at the University of Tehran on Thursday that Babak Zanjani was not a traitor, but he had helped the country during the sanctions.
The government itself had created a problem for him. The true story is that Babak Zanjani bought a few cargos of crude oil and transferred them to China, but when the administration changed, government officials warned Chinese to not buy that oil in exchange for supply their oil needs by government. So Babak Zanjani`s oil remained in China.
In 2016, the Supreme Court of Iran upheld the death sentence against Zanjani who worked as a broker selling Iranian oil through Revolutionary Guards companies during the period of international sanctions, especially during the reign of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
According to Supreme Court of Iran, Babak Zanjani, is charged with selling $2.8bn of crude but refusing to pay back the government.
"A few days ago, I had a trip to Dalian, China. Chinese told me that they need oil, which I replied, that the oil brought by Mr. Babak Zanjani had not yet been evacuated, why don`t you evacuate those cargos and pay the cost? they officially said that your government told us not to buy oil from Babak Zanjani,” Hassan Khosrojerdi claimed.
“You see, the government says, on the one hand, that Babak Zanjani did not pay his money, and, on the other hand, it took Babak Zanjani's customers and did not allow him to sell his oil.”
He mentioned to the Malaysian customers for Zanjani`s afloat oil and said, when the oil transferred to Malaysia, the oil`s color was changed, and so it returned to China, and now it's wandering over the sea. And the government does not allow it to sell.
Khosrojerdi noted that the only reason for the government officials' inconvenience to Babak Zanjani was that he had invented a method of selling oil that could benefit from the sanctions, so that he had bought oil from the National Oil Company and sold it at a discount to the customers and had benefited of money transfer, which actually replaced the discount which was given to the customer, and the Ministry of Oil understood this issue and advised Zanjani`s customers to stop buying his crude.