On October 3, quoting “informed sources”, Iranian state media reported the abduction of an oil rig in Khuzestan province, located in the southern part of Iran.
Fars News Agency, funded and run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, confirmed the theft of the oil rig in this oil-rich province. Eyewitnesses reported that trailers with Tehran license plates were involved in the incident, captivating the rig and leaving the province toward an unknown location.
The news agency, citing a reliable source, clarified that the stolen rig is not owned by the oil-rich southern regions or the National Drilling Company; rather, it belongs to a private company associated with Babak Zanjani, a regime-linked businessman who is currently in prison.
This marks at least the second reported instance of an oil rig theft in Iran. Previously, a similar incident had made headlines during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency.
In July 2015, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, who served as the regime’s Minister of Petroleum during Hassan Rouhani’s administration, confirmed the theft of an Iranian oil rig during the tenure of Ahmadinejad. He mentioned that a formal complaint was filed with the Ministry of Petroleum regarding this incident.
The semi-official ISNA news agency wrote on May 21, 2018, “There are various accounts of the oil rig disappearance. Since the case relates to Ahmadinejad’s government, efforts to recover the funds have taken a back seat. The accused and those in the loop have been pointing fingers at each other. In this quagmire, where hope for retrieval seems slim, $87 million meant for purchasing the oil rig is lost. This is because a key suspect, believed to be the broker of this deal and supposedly in possession of all the money, is outside Iran, making it impossible to trace his financial accounts.”
According to reports from state media, the new rig was stolen along the Ahvaz road, approximately 70 kilometers away.
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Babak Zanjani, often referred to as an entrepreneur, established companies outside Iran and was able to build relations and climb his way up to the regime’s trusted circles. While the regime’s oil sales were sanctioned by both the European Union and the United States, Zanjani was a major enabler who managed to sell sanctioned oil and transfer the funds back to Iran.
In April 2013, the United States Treasury Department designated and sanctioned “Babak Zanjani, along with a Malaysian bank and an international network of front companies for moving billions of dollars on behalf of the Iranian regime, including tens of millions of dollars to an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) company.”
Later, Babak Zanjani was arrested by regime authorities and accused of withholding $2.7 billion of government money owned by the Ministry of Petroleum. He was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to death.
In 2021, while Zanjani awaited execution, the regime’s Supreme Court hinted that the sentence could be changed if he repaid his debts to the government. His sentence was temporarily suspended, and the state said it is awaiting the return of the embezzled funds. Some analysts stated Zanjani is being made a scapegoat for corruption scandals in Iran.
Besides the factional blame game which is typical of the clerical regime, the so-called investigations led and published by state-controlled media in 2018 suggested that the Dean oil rig was “stolen” in 2015, at the heights of Iran’s oil embargo. Given the magnitude and the economic value of the filched subject, it is impossible that it would disappear without the knowledge of a state notorious for its security surveillance as well as its deceitfulness.
Moreover, it remains unclear how the stolen oil rig in Khuzestan province, linked to Babak Zanjani’s oil company, is attributed to him, given that the regime’s judiciary had stated ten years ago that all his assets were confiscated to settle his debts.