Irancell Gate Corruption Case: In the Name of the People, to the Benefit of Mobile Operators

Irancell Gate Corruption Case: Account Manipulation to Receive Money from the Government

The Irancell Gate corruption case came to light after the disclosure of letters from RighTel and Irancell. The Iran Gate corruption detection team found the matter suspicious. Field investigations carried out on the statistical community we were in contact with confirmed the suspicion that Irancell was manipulating accounts to present invoices and receive money from the Ministry of Communications.

Low-usage subscribers, whose traffic consumption on their phones was less than 1GB, were billed for the entire package they purchased.

To make this issue easier to understand, let’s use a short example. Suppose you are an Irancell subscriber and at the beginning of the month, you purchased a 10GB internet package. During the usage period, your consumption was 1GB. At the end of the period, Irancell declares your total traffic consumption as 9GB.

It might not seem important, and you may think the cost has been paid and it doesn’t matter. However, given the current situation in the country and internet restrictions, operators have found ways to receive money by presenting foreign traffic invoices. For example, it has recently been discussed that due to internet filtering, users have activated services to bypass filtering with domestic CDNs, resulting in losses for the operator.

In the current situation, considering the significant financial deficits and severe recession, this action by operators and the Ministry of Communications’ threat of operator bankruptcy is profiteering from people’s lives and property and encroachment on public funds.

• Does RighTel send letters to pave the way for Irancell’s account manipulation?
• What is the extent of Irancell and RighTel’s account manipulation to receive money from the government?
• Is this the first time this has happened? There are reports confirming the repetition of this issue.
• Is the Ministry of Communications unaware of this, or is this a coordinated account manipulation within the agencies to bypass the law?