Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 14
By Fatih Karimov – Trend:
Iran’s Privatization Organization (IPO) has cancelled a deal on selling the country’s Telecommunications Company to an IRGC-affiliated company Tose'e Etemad Mobin.
The IPO chief Ali Ashraf Pouri Hosseini said that the contract on selling 51 percent stake of the Telecommunications Company to Tose'e Etemad Mobin, a consortium controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has been cancelled, the IPO official website reported.
Pouri Hosseini said that the contract has been terminated because Tose'e Etemad Mobin has failed so far to pay billions rials of the deal’s instalments during seven years, since when the contract was originally signed.
The privatization organization has no choice but to cancel the contract as the buyer was not able to fulfil its obligations under the contract, he added.
He further said that the consortium announced that “is not able to pay instalments.”
The IRGC-linked consortium bought 51 percent share of Iran's Telecommunications Company in Oct. 2009, during the biggest deal on Iran's Stock Exchange.
It was claimed that a rival enterprise had been unfairly excluded from the bidding process because it lacked appropriate "security qualifications."
The telecoms takeover at that time provoked accusations that the government's privatisation program is a sham designed to sell state assets to the Revolutionary Guards.
Critics warned that purchase will allow increased monitoring of then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opponents.
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