The chief executive of French oil giant Total returned to work on Friday after being questioned about alleged illegal payments to Iran, six months after being named in a separate kickbacks probe on Iraq.
The twin investigations facing the head of France's largest company, Christophe de Margerie, weeks after he was appointed, dominated the country's media and knocked its election campaign off front pages despite Total's efforts to play down the storm. "He is back in the office. It is business as usual," a Total spokesman said. The company has denied any wrongdoing.
As de Margerie settled back into his 44th-floor office, the legal challenge facing the world's fourth largest oil company began seeping towards key personalities in Iran, where Total signed a gas deal in 1997.
The Paris prosecutor's office said that as a condition of his release on Thursday after 36 hours of questioning, de Margerie was not allowed to contact former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani or his son Mehdi.
"I don't know about this case. I am not in Iran and I cannot comment on that," Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani told Reuters in Tehran by telephone. De Margerie was also barred from meeting various other unnamed intermediaries in the award of a contract to develop Iran's offshore South Pars gasfield, one of the world's largest.
Such judicial orders do not directly implicate individuals but are usually imposed to prevent current or potential suspects in a probe from exchanging information.
De Margerie was placed under formal investigation in the Iran case late on Thursday on suspicion of "corruption of foreign officials" and "misuse of company assets".
This means he is treated as a suspect, but magistrates may eventually decide the case should not go to trial. De Margerie remains under limited judicial supervision, obliging him to be ready to answer more questions, but Total said nothing prevented him from doing his job normally.
Paris prosecutors began investigating the 1997 South Pars gas contract between Total and Iran in December after the discovery of 95 million Swiss francs ($78.6 million) in the Swiss bank of an intermediary, according to judicial sources.
De Margerie had already been placed under investigation in October in an inquiry into oil purchases under the United Nations oil-for-food programme in Iraq, designed to ease sanctions under UN control while Saddam Hussein was in power. De Margerie was Total's head of Middle East operations from 1995 to 1999, leading some French newspapers to discuss whether the 55-year-old career oil man was a fall-guy.
Total is considering joining a nearly $10 billion project to build Iran's first liquefied natural gas export terminal. The United States wants Western oil firms to shun Iran to support Western pressure on Tehran to abandon its nuclear activities.
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