TEHRAN – A lawmaker called for revocation of a contract earlier agreed between Iran’s Oil Ministry and a foreign oil contractor, Crescent National Gas Corporation Limited (CNGCL), a major United Arab Emirates-based gas marketing company.

Majlis (the parliament) would definitely revoke the contract, noted on Wednesday Shokrollah Attarzadeh, the second vice chairman of the Majlis Energy Committee. He was clearly referring to the reports explaining the economic corruptions committed by the company. “I believe that in addition to the Iranian laws, international regulations would also allow either side of an agreement to revoke a contract having problems such as economic corruption,” Attarzadeh said adding, “if the government discovers a case of economic foul play it has the right to nullify it even without having to ask for the Majlis permission.”

Referring to certain ambiguities in the oil contracts concluded by the Oil Ministry, the legislator warned that Majlis should be more sensitive to the foreign agreements concluded with Iran. It should have a full supervision over them, the way it acted on the Turkcell case. The Majlis representative was referring to the contract closed by the Iranian Telecommunications Company with a Turkish contractor company Turkcell to develop the second operator of Iran’s mobile phone network.

It seems that the National Iranian Oil Company granted special privileges to Crescent. There are no doubts that there are violations in the contract, he added.

The contract to export 500 million cubic feet of Iran’s natural gas to the UAE would inflict 21 million dollars damages upon the country. Based on the agreement, the UAE would gain $8 billion in profit and $4 billion would be given to the brokerage company Crescent. The contract would be valid for 25 years and was slated to start last year.

The low price of gas and the presence of a brokerage company are the two main problems of the deal. The project has been slammed by some judicial authorities here as one of the biggest economic corruption cases.

Crescent Corporation is currently negotiating on oil exploration deals with the South American countries as well as a number of Iran’s neighboring states such as Iraq, and Syria.