Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh on Saturday, July 7, condemned bribery charges levelled at officials in his ministry over oil contracts, the official IRNA agency reported. "These are serious defamatory statements which justify court action, and the ministry intends to follow through on this affair," the minister added during a news conference for Iranian journalists.
While condemning the accusations made against his colleagues, Zangheneh said he was "open to any criticism and comment over (foreign) oil contracts" made by Iran. The minister added that a commission including a representative of the country's head of state, President Mohammad Khatami, studies and evaluates Iranian oil contracts.
This reaction comes amid a lively campaign directed at officials of the ministry accused of taking large bribes over oil contracts with foreign companies.
Earlier this week, a leading Iranian conservative cleric and secretary of the powerful supervisory Guardians Council alerted the judiciary to possible cases of bribery at the ministry, according to a press report.
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati "announced that he would be informing the nation's highest judicial authority of immense kickbacks and dubious contracts within the oil ministry," the pro-reform Aftab-e Yazd paper said.
Jannati had reportedly claimed to have the names of those people who "plundered millions and millions in the oil empire and transferred the money to their foreign accounts."
"I will ask the judiciary chief to (...) follow up on the case and to announce the results after concluding the investigations," the paper quoted him as saying.
The oil ministry has welcomed the identification of all the people involved in the scandal and asked Jannati to provide President Mohammad Khatami, the ministry, as well as all other responsible officials with the necessary information, the paper added.
It also said that Jannati had called on parliament speaker Mehdi Karubi to designate an impartial delegation to investigate the matter in a "non-political manner" in order to find out whether it is "true, or just allegations."
The dozen or so contracts concluded with European firms over the past six years have all been on the so-called buy-back basis, whereby future revenue from the oil and gas produced provides the return on investment.
The formula has been repeatedly criticised by both conservatives and reformists in parliament, but they have failed to change it and a probe mounted last year failed to make progress.
Negotiations on the contracts are the sole responsibility of Iran's National Oil Company, NIOC. — (AFP)
© Agence France Presse
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
