News / Energy

UK court rules on missing Iranian oil rig: Fars News

Tuesday, 19 October 2021 7:45 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 19 October 2021 7:45 PM ]

A court of appeal in the UK rules that funds lost in a 2012 oil rig deal should be returned to Iran.

A court of appeal in the UK has issued its final verdict on a controversial case known as the missing Iranian oil rig while ordering suspects in the case to compensate an Iranian Oil Ministry company, a local news agency report shows.

The Tuesday report by the semi-official Fars news agency said that the UK court had ruled that three Iranian suspects involved in a 2012 deal between a UK-based company and the Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company (IOEC) that had been intended to buy an oil rig should return 24 trillion rials worth of funds (over $88 million) to the IOEC.

The three suspects, identified as Ali Taheri Motlagh, Morad Shirani and Reza Mostafavi Tabatabaei, had acted as IOEC officials or as middle man in a controversial deal that was never fulfilled.

Under the deal, the IOEC had been supposed to take delivery of Fortuna, a used oil rig owned by a Romanian businessman, through a company set up in the UK. It came as the Iranian officials at the time were struggling to bypass a previous round of international sanctions on the country’s nuclear program.