An email from someone claiming to represent a construction company in Iraq recently landed in my inbox:
Hello and Salam Elicum, I was referred to you by our Commercial Representation Manager in Venezuela.
I am the regional director for South America of Al-Bilal Group, a major construction firm in the Middle East, as you can see on our website.
A construction company in the Caracas region has just contacted us to collaborate on an important building project.
The project involves designing 6 government buildings (complete renovation construction).
The name of this company is Kayson. They are an Iranian construction company that made a fortune in the Venezuelan construction market under the Chávez regime.
Kayson has invited us to participate in this significant construction project because our company boasts one of the best cost-effective construction design departments and has a very good professional reputation.
Since the contract for the project will be signed between Kayson Iran and the government authorities without our name being included, as we will only act as a subcontractor for Kayson, we want to ensure that you have a solid track record and know how to collect payments in this challenging political and economic environment.
We wish to conduct a small local investigation to confirm Kayson’s market position with Maduro’s administration and their overall reputation, and for this, we would like to hire you and your team.
Please respond if you can assist us. We would also like to know the timeframe for your consultation and your fees, as our senior management needs to make a decision soon regarding this project cooperation.
Looking forward to your information and eager to speak with you in person.
Kayson made global headlines last year, as reported by AP:
The Iranian ambassador to Venezuela stated on Tuesday that a check worth about 70 million dollars, found by German authorities in the luggage of Iran’s former central bank chief, was intended for an Iranian company for its public housing construction expenses in Venezuela.
The Iranian ambassador, Hojattolah Soltani, made these remarks during an interview with Venezuelan television channel Globovisión, noting that the check for 300 million Venezuelan bolívars would be used for Kayson Company’s expenses, a Tehran-based construction company building thousands of homes for the Venezuelan government.
The ambassador emphasized that the individual with the check, who was detained by German authorities last month, is not currently a government official. Soltani stated that Tahmasb Mazaheri, former head of the central bank of Iran and ex-minister of economy, is working as an advisor for the Iranian company.
Venezuelan authorities had to comment on the issue and stressed that everything was in order. The Iranian ambassador in Caracas would later retract his earlier statement, saying about the seized check messenger that “[he] is in no way a government official (of Iran); nor has his name been added to the confiscated check,” adding that the check “was signed in Iran and Mr. Mazaheri was heading to Venezuela to cash it at the Banco Venezuela.”
So, Mazaheri, who according to the Iranian ambassador is not a government official, was entrusted with carrying a check worth $70 million just like that? Mazaheri was director of the International Development Bank, an entity designated by OFAC under scrutiny by the U.S. Treasury Department “for providing or attempting to provide financial services to the Ministry of Defense and Logistics of the Iranian Armed Forces (MODAFL).” The European Union also sanctioned the bank for being involved in “ballistic missile or nuclear activities.”
The explanations provided by the Iranian ambassador and Kayson representative in Caracas, that Mazaheri was just a courier and that his company collects in bolívares in Tehran, are at least laughable. In fact, when Mazaheri was arrested in February 2013, Kayson had already been removed from the Venezuelan government contractors’ registry. And by the time I received the previous email earlier this month, the Kayson guy had been caught in Germany, yet Kayson is still looking for subcontractors to carry out the construction of 6 government buildings in Venezuela?
Platts provides some insight about Kayson:
A consortium formed by the Khatam ol-Anbia Reconstruction Headquarters, the engineering arm of the Revolutionary Guard, the private Iranian company Kayson, and the Razavi group based in Mashhad, paid 212 million dollars for 61% of Petropars, which manages several phases of South Pars development.
Readers of this site might remember what I wrote about Petropars some time ago:
Posted in Official Gazette No. 39.577 on Monday, December 20, 2010 (pages 2 and 3), Hugo Chávez’s limping congress announced the creation of a partnership (“mixed company”) with Petropars UK Limited, a London-based entity fully owned by Petropars Ltd. [board]. Petropars UK Limited and its parent company are on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of sanctioned companies determined to be controlled by the Iranian government. This designation is the first by the United States to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929 and is based on actions mandated by the Security Council.
Seyyed Mehdi Mir Moezi, Gholamreza Manouchehri, and Nematollah Alirezaei are names associated with Petropars UK Limited, whose records at Companies House show a capital statement dated March 25, 2010, of £100,000. Moreover, records reveal that the company is inactive. Despite this, the Venezuelan congress has published the creation of a partnership between the Venezuelan Oil Corporation and Petropars Limited UK, granting the latter exploration, production, transportation, and storage rights for 25 years over an area of 353.15 square kilometers, located in the Dobokubi oil field.
And Venezuelan workers don’t seem too pleased with Kayson [another example here, and reports claim that 11 Kayson workers have been killed here in Venezuela]. This seems to be yet another instance of irresponsible hiring and subcontracting corruption by the chavista regime, but we’ve seen this before, haven’t we?
May the gentleman who sent that email consider this post a generous public service…