Paper Shows U.S.-Flagged Plane in Iran Has Ties to Ghana
New details emerged on Friday about an American plane, owned by a small community bank in Utah and mysteriously parked this week at Tehran’s airport, showing that it had been leased by a Ghanaian mining company owned by a brother of Ghana’s president.
Buffeted
by questions about why an American plane was in Tehran, Iran’s Foreign
Ministry said on Friday that the plane had been used to transport top
Ghanaian officials as part of a broader push to expand cooperation
between the two countries.
The
visit comes as Iran seeks to cultivate close relations with West
African countries including Ghana, which also enjoys warm relations with
the United States. In what seemed like an indirect reference to the
chilly relationship between the United States and Iran, Marziyeh Afkham,
the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman who announced the purpose of the visit
in a statement, emphasized that the passengers and crew “were all non-American.”
Still,
the American-flagged plane, a Bombardier jetliner powered by two
General Electric engines, was an extraordinary sight in Iran and
illustrated how aircraft operators can obscure themselves under United
States rules that some American law enforcement officials find
troubling. Iran has been so ostracized by the West over the years,
particularly by the United States, that typically permission is required
from officials in Washington for such a plane to fly there.
A
confidential document reviewed by The New York Times showed that the
plane is held in a trust by the Bank of Utah on behalf of the mining
company, Engineers and Planners, which is based in Accra, the Ghanaian
capital. As the beneficiary of the trust, the company operates the
plane. The company’s chief executive is Ibrahim Mahama, a brother of
President John Dramani Mahama.
The
plane departed Iran on Thursday, Ms. Afkham said, after a series of
meetings between the Ghanaian delegation and top Iranian officials.
Reached by telephone Friday night, Ibrahim Mahama said, “Let me get some details and I will call you back.”
The
plane has a history of intercontinental travel, according to images
posted on the Internet by amateur photographers who make a sport of
snapping airport takeoffs and landings to chronicle flight itineraries.
Six months before the plane was spotted on Tuesday parked at the V.I.P.
section of Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, it was seen leaving a London-area
airport bound for Accra. The plane can be easily identified by the call
letters on its tail engines, N604EP.
While
the Ghanaian company is not subject to the patchwork of sanction rules
constricting trade between Iran and the United States, the Utah bank,
based in Ogden, is bound by sanctions.
To
travel to Iran, the aircraft would typically need a license from the
Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the primary
enforcer of American sanctions against Iran. With its American engines,
the plane would also typically have to obtain a separate license from
the Commerce Department.
The
Office of Foreign Assets Control did not issue a license for the
plane’s flight to Iran, according to two people briefed on the matter,
raising questions about whether its flight had flouted American law.
Treasury officials declined to comment.
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Questions
about whether a license was even required are compounded by federal
aviation regulations that can shroud the identity of a plane’s
operators. In the case of this plane, the information held in a vast
database maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration was limited.
The trustee — in this instance, the Bank of Utah — was the sole entity
recorded as owner.
The
bank, though, was acting as a trustee on behalf of the Ghanaian
company, according to a copy of the trust agreement, signed on Sept. 11,
2013. Through the complicated legal pact, the title to the aircraft is
held by the Bank of Utah, an arrangement that enables foreign
corporations, dignitaries and others to invest in and lease planes that
fly freely within the United States, and throughout the world. To
operate the plane, the Ghanaian company leases it.
Iran
has made no secret of its desire to strengthen relations in Africa.
Last April, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited three West African
countries — Niger, a leading producer of uranium, Benin and Ghana. The
trip to Niger in particular raised speculation that Mr. Ahmadinejad was
looking for sources of uranium for Iran’s disputed nuclear program, a
major reason for the regimen of Western sanctions imposed on the
country.
In
February, Iran invited Ghana’s president to visit Tehran for what local
news reports called discussions of “issues of mutual interests.”
In
Ghana, the aircraft spotted in Tehran this week became the object of
wide speculation after local media reports tying the plane to President
Mahama. In June 2012, the mining company, which contracts with mines in
northern Liberia and Congo, issued a news release denying reports that
the president, who was technically still vice president at the time, had
acquired the plane.
But
in the denial, the company provided a window into how the plane is
used, “The company has entered into an agreement with an American
company to provide it with air services using a Challenger 600
aircraft.” The pact, the company said, enables “mining companies, oil
service companies and other corporate institutions” to rent the plane.
None of these other companies, the actual entities flying the plane, appear on the trust document.
Such
opacity troubles some American law enforcement officials, according to
several people with direct knowledge of the matter. The fear, these
people say, is that the trust arrangements could enable questionable
actors to quietly lease private planes. While the F.A.A. says it knows
the actual owners of every aircraft, the trust structure can enable a
tenuous chain, with one operator leasing the plane to another company,
and another, with the details far from public view.
Former
federal officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they
believed that the plane has been used to transport President Mahama
before. They based that conjecture partly on the plane’s known
itineraries from photos posted online.
One
image captured the plane flying to the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, where President Mahama spoke in September. The Ghanaian
president was also in London last October when the aircraft was spotted
leaving there for Accra.
The
aircraft has changed hands several times, according to contracts
reviewed by The Times. They provide a family tree of sorts, showing the
plane was made by the Canadian company, Bombardier, in 2000. From there,
it was leased to a German travel company, and later by a shipping
company executive.
Kitty Bennett contributed reporting from Washington, Adam Nossiter from Lagos, Nigeria, and Rukmini Callimachi from New York.
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