Thursday, 30 January 2014

Arrest of Billionaire Highlights Political Divisions in Iran - NYTimes.com

Arrest of Billionaire Highlights Political Divisions in Iran - NYTimes.com:



"While international sanctions have made life a struggle for many Iranians, they were a big break for businessman Babak Zanjani, who made a fortune helping the government evade the restrictions on oil sales. He also made enemies.



A $40,000 watch on his wrist and a Tehran football club for a plaything, Zanjani shuttled to meetings on private jets, arranging billions of dollars of oil deals through a network of companies that stretched from Turkey to Malaysia, Tajikistan and the United Arab Emirates, he said last autumn.



"This is my work - sanctions-busting operations," he told Iranian current affairs magazine Aseman.



Under the conservative presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the 39-year-old Zanjani was good enough at his work to amass a fortune of $10 billion - along with debts of a similar scale, he told Aseman - until he was arrested late last month."



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