Iranian tech firm CEO denies WP report he was under pressure to sell shares
The CEO of a major Iranian technology company has rejected a report by the Washington Post claiming that he was under pressure to sell his shares to a conglomerate controlled by the government.
Hessam Armandehi said in a post on his LinkedIn page that if he had been pressured by a government-run entity to sell parts of the share in Divar, as claimed in an August 6 report by the WP, he would go beyond denying the issue and would immediately publicize it in the media.
“As a shareholder and a member of the board of directors, I have no information about the mentioned story,” said Armandehi in his post.
The WP’s report, which focused on alleged attempts by Iran’s IRGC military force to control the country’s economy, came after Armandehi published a letter from the Tehran Stock Exchange saying the body was unable to accept Divar’s listing because the IRGC’s intelligence unit had conditioned the listing on Armandehi’s absence from the company.
Divar is a large online platform of ads with tens of millions of users in Iran. The company, which has sold 15% of its shares to a consortium of foreign investors, including Europeans, has been viewed as a clear case of success in Iran’s burgeoning ecommerce market.
In his recent post, Armandehi also dismissed part of WP’s report questioning how he had got hold of a letter indicating the IRGC was opposed to his company’s efforts to go public, insisting that the letter was not confidential.
“Telling the truth is a responsibility that matters more than ever in today’s media discourse,” he said while challenging the inaccuracy of WP’s recent report.
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