Page 81 - IRANRptOct22

Iran’s Mobarakeh Steel Company hit by parliamentary claims of a $3bn corruption scandal
Largest Iranian steelmaker Mobarakeh Steel Company has been hit by the release of the findings of a three-year parliamentary investigation that include allegations of corruption amounting to $3bn and tied to the administration of former president Hassan Rohani.
After the release of the findings, the Iranian stock exchange suspended trading of semi-public company Mobarakeh’s shares. President Ebrahim Raisi, meanwhile, quickly called for the firing and charging of implicated company personnel. The claims of large-scale corruption come at a difficult time for the regime, with growing public discontent at the country’s economic turmoil and other grievances, such as prolonged water shortages, increasingly seen in street demonstrations. Graft is widely viewed as systemic in Iran and the Raisi administration is under significant pressure to tackle it head-on.
Drawing on more than 3,000 documents and 1,200 files, the 300-page report alleges that senior officials of Rohani's government received illicit payoffs and inserted themselves in processes that meant the granting of state contracts to the company, a giant located near the city of Mobarakeh in the central Isfahan Province, which generates around 1% of Iranian GDP. Big sums found their way to branches of Iran's military, Isfahan provincial police and leaders of Friday Prayers, the report claims. The alleged corruption is equivalent to around one-third of the value of Mobarakeh’s estimated worth of $10bn.
Other allegations focus on illicit rent payments, payments to consultants who seemingly never undertook any assignments, illegal stock transactions related to company subsidiaries and the inking of an inflated contract with an unqualified Chinese company taken on to build a steel-rolling platform. Mysterious payments were also made by Mobarakeh to state broadcaster Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the report alleges.
Following a vote in parliament, the findings will now be referred to the judiciary.
9.2.6 Renewable energy corporate news
Iranian power plant constructor MAPNA announces record $2.5bn in technology and engineering exports
Iranian power plant consructor MAPNA Group achieved a record $2.5bn of technology and engineering exports in the 12 months to July, according to the group’s CEO Abbas Aliabadi, as cited by Otagh Iran. Speaking at a press conference, Aliabadi said MAPNA carried out several key infrastructure projects in Iraq and Syria during the past year.
“The total capacity of power plants we built in neighbouring countries over the past year was 5,668 megawatts, which is a good record and was worth 2.5 billion euros,” he added.
Aliabadi said that the efforts of MAPNA, by far the largest Iranian power plant developer, supplied 540MW of electricity to Iraq’s grid in the three months to July, with the plants behind the supply bearing an investment value of €300mn.
Two other power plants built by MAPNA in Iraq were ready for synchronisation with the electricity grid, he also said.
MAPNA contributed to the reconstruction of a major power plant in Syria’s second largest city of Aleppo, a city that has been left in ruins in the country’s civil war.
Three other MAPNA power plants are under construction in Latakia on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, an area of the country that has escaped relatively unscathed from civil war damage.
81 IRAN Country Report October 2022 www.intellinews.com