{"id":9542,"date":"2012-04-02T03:45:27","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T01:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/04\/mtn-former-ceo-denies-bribes-to-iran-s-africa\/"},"modified":"2012-04-02T03:45:27","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T01:45:27","slug":"mtn-former-ceo-denies-bribes-to-iran-s-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/mtn-former-ceo-denies-bribes-to-iran-s-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN former CEO denies bribes to Iran, S.Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">JOHANNESBURG, April 1<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; The former chief executive<br \/>\nof MTN Group denied on Sunday that he authorised bribes<br \/>\nto Iranian and South African government officials in return for<br \/>\na cellular licence in Iran.<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can state quite categorically that during my tenure as<br \/>\ngroup CEO of MTN no bribes were authorised or paid by the MTN<br \/>\nGroup to any South African or Iranian government officials to<br \/>\nsecure the mobile licence in Iran,&#8221; Phuthuma Nhleko said in a<br \/>\nstatement.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Turkish mobile operator Turkcell this week filed a $4.2<br \/>\nbillion lawsuit against MTN, accusing it of using bribery and<br \/>\nother corrupt acts to win its licence in Iran in 2004.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Nhleko, who was then the CEO of MTN, is named in the suit,<br \/>\nas well as its current CEO, who was then the chief operating<br \/>\nofficer.\t<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by David Dolan, editing by Ed Stoddard)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright\">\n<p>         \t\t\u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JOHANNESBURG, April 1 (Reuters) &#8211; The former chief executive of MTN Group denied on Sunday that he authorised bribes to Iranian and South African government officials in return for a cellular licence in Iran. &#8220;I can state quite categorically that during my tenure as group CEO of MTN no bribes were authorised or paid by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-9542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}