Reported by PMOI/MEK
Iran, Dec. 30, 2018 –
On Friday, the parliament of the Iranian regime summoned oil minister Bijan Zanganeh to question him about bribery cases involving French oil giant Total. The event was another manifestation of inner-feud between the different ruling factions that display the endemic corruption that is plaguing the regime in its entirety.
Discussing payment of bribes by Total managers to Iranian authorities, MP Hedayotallah Khademi said, “This will definitely be one of our questions and we need to know the contracts, the amount of bribes and the authorities involved as well as how those persons were dealt with.”
On December 21, a Paris court fined Total 500,000 euros for paying bribes to Iranian officials in relation with contracts dating back to 1997. According to court documents, Total authorities paid $30 million to Iranian authorities under the cover of consultancy expenses to facilitate a contract for Iran’s South Pars gas field. The bribes involved Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the son of the former Iranian regime president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Total eventually managed to clinch a $2 billion contract for developing the South Pars gas field. Years later, investigations into the contract began. Some of the people involved in the case disappeared and their destinies and whereabouts remain unknown. It is said that some of these people were possibly killed in suspicious accidents.
The court proceedings and investigations regarding Total’s alleged bribery charges began in 2006. 12 years later, the French court finally gave its verdict and sentence. However, several of the people in the case are either dead or not reachable. This includes two Iranian citizens, who have since disappeared and Christophe de Margerie, the former CEO of Total, who died in an airplane crash in 2014.
