Untold secrets of the Crescent case: Billions in fees for Iranian lawyers in exchange for an offer of 8 Emirati cents

According to Energy Press, in a specialized session analyzing the recent ruling of the London Court of Appeal against the National Iranian Oil Company in the Crescent case, Dr. Mohammad Jafar Ghanbari Jahromi, a member of the faculty of law at Shahid Beheshti University, presented a documentary account of the ups and downs of this case and its legal and political roots; a narrative that reveals some of the untold stories of a controversial multi-billion dollar case.
Referring to the historical background of this contract, Ghanbari Jahromi said: The Crescent contract was signed in 2001 and was supposed to be implemented during the construction and preparation stages of the pipelines and platforms, and the gas transfer would take place in 2005.
However, due to widespread disagreements within Iran, this contract never reached the implementation stage. He clarified that from the very beginning, in different governments, groups of rent-seekers and economic interests prevented its implementation, citing corruption or inefficiency of the contract, while others demanded its implementation. This factional conflict turned the case from a technical issue to a political one.
According to him, international arbitration against Iran began in 2009, and since 2010, efforts have been made to resume gas exports, but they have been unsuccessful. Between 2009 and 2014, international arbitrators issued numerous rulings based on legal reports and defenses by Iran’s foreign lawyers. One of these rulings was a 380-page ruling, in which nearly 240 pages referred to corruption in the contract, but according to Ghanbari, “Iran has never provided any solid evidence in this regard.”
He continued: “The claim of corruption in this case was not enough for the arbitral tribunal to lose its jurisdiction, because corruption in concluding a contract is different from corruption in the arbitration clause. In order for the arbitral award to be invalidated, we would have had to prove that the arbitrators also achieved this jurisdiction through corruption or bribery, and this was not proven.”
In another part of his speech, Ghanbari referred to the role of Iranian and foreign lawyers and said: “During the Ahmadinejad administration, some people without the necessary expertise entered the case and made wrong decisions. While, according to documents, some Iranian lawyers received between one and one and a half percent of the export amount as a fee. In contrast, the Emirati side had offered a much lower figure, around 8 cents per unit of gas.”