Exxon Mobil

"ExxonMobil did business with Iran, Syria and Sudan through a European subsidiary while President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of State was a top executive of the oil giant and those countries were under U.S. sanctions as state sponsors of terrorism, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show. That business connection is likely to surface Wednesday at a confirmation hearing for ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The sales were conducted in 2003, 2004 and 2005 by Infineum, in which ExxonMobil owned a 50% share, according to SEC documents unearthed by American Bridge, a Democratic research group. ExxonMobil told USA TODAY the transactions were legal because Infineum, a joint venture with Shell Corporation, was based in Europe and the transactions did not involve any U.S. employees. The filings, from 2006, show that the company had $53.2 million in sales to Iran, $600,000 in sales to Sudan and $1.1 million in sales to Syria during those three years." (USA Today, "ExxonMobil and Iran did business under secretary of State nominee Tillerson," 1/9/2017).

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According to an Iran Notice filed with the SEC in 2013: "The captioned Act was signed by President Obama on August 10, 2012.  Among other things, the Act extended the prohibition against U.S. persons doing business with the Government of Iran to include such persons’ non-U.S. subsidiaries.  Previously, non-U.S. subsidiaries were not covered by this restriction.  Application of the restriction to non-U.S. subsidiaries took effect on October 10, 2012.  The Act also requires registrants to disclose, in their annual and quarterly reports, activities covered by the Act which occurred anytime during the period covered by the report, even if such activities occurred prior to the effective date of the Act and were permitted at the time.

During the period from January to September, 2012, ExxonMobil’s majority-owned Canadian affiliate, Imperial Oil Limited (IOL), made several fleet sales of motor fuel with an aggregate total sales price of approximately 11,000 Canadian dollars to the Iranian Embassy in Canada.  IOL’s net profits attributable to these sales were less than 500 Canadian dollars.  The sales were made without the involvement of any U.S. person and were permitted by U.S. laws in effect at the time.  No sales occurred after the October 10, 2012, effective date, and we do not expect any such sales to occur in the future."

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"Infineum U.K., a joint venture in which ExxonMobil has a 50 percent indirect ownership, sold gasoline additives to Iran, but stopped in 2006, according to Cynthia Bergman White, company spokeswoman. Exxon is a big supplier of fuel to the Department of Defense." From 2000-2009, the company has been the recipient of $4.9 billion in US federal funds.  They have withdrawn their investments from Iran. (The New York Times, "Profiting from Iran, and the US," 3/6/2010)

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"An AP review of corporate SEC filings found dozens of companies that have done business in Iran in recent years or said their products or services may have made it there through other channels. Some are household names: PepsiCo, Tyson Foods, Canon, BP Amoco, Exxon Mobil, GE Healthcare, the Wells Fargo financial services company, Visa, MasterCard and the Cadbury Schweppes candy and beverage maker." (Associated Press, "From bull semen to bras, Iran still buys American," 7/9/08)