Rafsanjani's Relatives and Associates Arrested for Oil Mafia NetworK

Iran Press News: Translated by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi. Courtesy of FrontPageMag.

Ahmadinejad's planted presidency has driven the internal crisis between Mullah camps to a fever pitch in Iran. Vicious threats and trenchant accusations have been slung from Friday prayer pulpits to the Islamic Parliament's assembly podium. And now Ahmadinejad's goon squad has struck its first blow, making good on the warnings that had been passed along a couple of weeks ago.

On Wednesday, July 27th, one of the regime's many news agencies, FARS, which is an 'information' arm of the Islamic judiciary, announced the arrest of several of the executives of the Oriental Kish Oil Company, which belongs to Rafsanjani's children and relatives. They were brought up on charges of economic corruption. READ MORE

According to the news agency's report: "Following the necessary investigations by the judiciary's bailiffs, with warrants from the public prosecutor's office (mainly mullahs who only dole out Islamic jurisprudence), the case of economic corruption and malfeasance, certain of the authorities of Kish Oriental Oil Company [which is considered to be one of the country's biggest oil companies], have been arrested and under questioning. The head of the board of directors was also among those detained."

The company was incorporated under the industrial and moral incorporation and ownership laws in the duty free area of Kish (an island in the Persian Gulf) and demonstrated to be a service and engineering company for oil drilling. Mehrdad Safdari, the head of the board of directors and Cyrus Nasseri, who also happens to be one of the senior nuclear negotiators of the regime, is said to be the Secretary of the board. Nasseri, who is considered to be one of the regime's senior ‘diplomats’, is also known to be one of Rafsanjani's relatives. He has been an active member of the so-called diplomatic team negotiating the nuclear issues has, through the help of a few authorities in the U.N. offices in Tehran, as well as a few active members of the energy cartel, registered Kish Oriental Oil Company in both the United Kingdom and Dubai.

A reliable source stated that given the parameters, the close-knit cooperation and association of one of the key members of the regime's nuclear negotiation team with Halliburton, can be an alarm bell which will necessarily instigate the dynamics of the members of the regimes' negotiating committee.

During the first round of interrogations in the judiciary a huge network of oil mafia has been exposed and it is now clear that Kish Oriental Oil Company is the holder of the largest block of oil contracts with the National Iranian Oil Company.