UANI

Konecranes is a Finnish construction equipment company and "world-leading lifting equipment manufacturer serving manufacturing and process industries, nuclear industry, shipyards and harbors with productivity enhancing lifting solutions and services." In 2009, Konecranes had a sales total of 1.67 billion euros (Company Website). 

Konecranes sells cranes through an Iranian dealer, Sepahan Lifter (Company Website). 

Konecranes owns an American crane company, Morris Materials. Hoist Magazine, a trade journal, reported that Morris sold crane kits to the Iran-based Arian Company, which generated $900,000 in sales in the year 2000 alone ("Morris Firms Relationships in Middle Eastern Region"). 

The British-Iranian Chamber of Commerce notes that Alperton Ltd, a British engineering company, operates dealerships for Morris cranes in Iran (BICC). 

Konecranes operates a joint venture, Crane Industrial Services LLC, with the UAE-based Kanoo Group. The shipping arm of the Kanoo Group has extensive business interests in Iran (Kanoo Shipping Agencies). 

In addition to their wide application in the petrochemical, oil, natural gas, and nuclear industries, Iran has used overhead cranes to publicly execute political prisoners ("Khomeini fatwa led to killing of 30,000 in Iran"). 

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) is a multinational telecommunications, hardware, software, and services company working with communication system providers in 150 countries (Company Website. “About Us”).

Nokia and Siemens created the jointly-owned subsidiary in 2006, merging their respective network infrastructure divisions. The 50/50 joint venture is incorporated in the Netherlands and headquartered in Finland (Ovum. “Siemens and Nokia to merge network infrastructure divisions,” 6/19/2006). 

Board control is held by Nokia, with Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo serving as company Chairman.

---

On June 22, 2009, amidst the post-election unrest in Iran, The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2008, the Nokia Siemens Networks had sold equipment to Iran that contributed to the Iranian regime’s ability to monitor and censor Internet, voice and mobile communications.

The “monitoring center [Lawful Interception Gateway (LIG)],” sold to the government’s telecommunications monopoly TCI (Telecommunications Company of Iran), intrinsically provides the regime “the capability to intercept any communications that runs over them.” The equipment also has lawful uses, such as “intercepting data for the purposes of combating terrorism, child pornography, drug trafficking and other criminal activities carried out online.”

Reportedly, the Iranian government began to make extensive use of this technology during the post-election unrest. The regime likely used the equipment to perform “deep packet inspections,” allowing the government to monitor online communications such emails, Internet phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messaging, etc (The Wall Street Journal. “Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology,” 6/22/09).

---

Nokia Siemens also continues to provide services to two cellphone companies in Iran. The company spokesman also said that “Forty million people in Iran have gotten cellphones over the last couple of years.”

Between 2000 and March 2010, Nokia Siemens received $21.5 million in U.S. federal funds (The New York Times. “Profiting from Iran, and the U.S.”, 3/6/10). As of June 29, 2010, USASpending.gov now lists that Nokia Siemens has received nearly $26.7 million from the U.S. government, with the overwhelming majority of those funds ($23 million) coming from the Department of Defense (USASpending.gov, 6/29/10).

According to its website, “KONE is one of the global leaders in the elevator and escalator industry. The company has been committed to understanding the needs of its customers for the past century, providing industry-leading elevators, escalators and automatic building doors as well as innovative solutions for modernization and maintenance…In 2009, KONE had annual net sales of EUR 4.7 billion and approximately 34,000 employees” (Company website).
---

Kone lists Saba as its authorized distributor in Iran. (Company website)

---

“Saba Engineering Co. is the exclusive representative of all the production of KONE Co. in Iran and supplies all type of Elevator, Escalators, Auto walks and ramps.” (Iranian Distributor website)

"Wartsila Corporation, a Finnish manufacturer of ship engines, has built power plants in Iran and in 2002 supplied engines for Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line (IRISL) container ships. IRISL is a state-owned shipping company which was later blacklisted by the United States for facilitating the transfer of military cargo to Iran. Wartsila also has received federal contracts to provide, among others, engine parts to the Coast Guard. A Wartsila spokesman,  Atte Palomaki, said that the company operates in full compliance with sanctions, as it did when it supplied engines to a German shipyard building IRISL ships. "At that time IRISL was not on any blacklist," he said, adding that since then  the company has not supplied IRISL with any engines, nor would it because of the blacklisting. He said the company does have an agent in Iran who is paid on a commission basis to service other power plant and shipbuilding customers, but characterized the company's sales efforts there as a "minor activity." As the United States lobbies for tough new sanctions, Mr. Palomaki said Wartsila is keeping a watchful eye on the situation and its business in Iran: "We have concerns in the sense that the U.S. Navy is an important customer for us," he said. "We want to be very careful."

From 2000-2009, the company was the recipient of $95.4 million US federal funds.  Their business in Iran is currently active.  (The New York Times, "Profiting from Iran, and the US", 3/6/2010)

--

The enormous New York State Common Retirement Fund plans to divest $86.2 million in investments from nine companies doing business in Sudan and Iran...The decision comes after two years of reviewing these companies, the potential risk of the investments and, in some cases, humanitarian efforts in these countries."We don't expect our investments to benefit regimes that support genocide and terrorism," said DiNapoli. The fund plans to divest out of $86 million in Gazprom (OGZPY), Inpex (1605.TO), Lukoil (LUKOY), Oil And Natural Gas Corp (500312.BY), OMV (OMVKY), Petroleo Brasilia (PBR), Statoil (STO), Wartsila OYJ and Sinopec Corp. DiNapoli said the firms were chosen because "they failed to respond or we were not satisfied with their responses" when asked to provide information to the fund on the investments and their risks. (Wall Street Journal, "NY Comptroller To Divest $86.2M In State Pension Fund Investments," 6/30/09)

"Nokia-Siemens Networks on Wednesday, June 2 admitted its share of the blame for Iran's brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrators last year after selling mobile phone surveillance to the authoritarian regime.

The Finnish-German telecoms joint venture was at the centre of an ethics controversy last year when it emerged that it had supplied surveillance technology to two Iranian mobile phone operators. The technology was used to track down dissidents amid the mass protests following the contested re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009.

Apart from the crackdown on demonstrators, which saw 36 confirmed deaths, Iranian authorities blocked websites such as Twitter and Facebook, jammed and tracked cell phone calls and text messages. They used the so-called monitoring centre acquired from Nokia-Siemens in 2008 to carry out the work."

(Businessweek.com, "Nokia-Siemens Rues Iran Crackdown Role," 6/3/2010)

--

"Nokia, which has sold mobile devices and accessories to Iran since at least 2004, said in a 2010 Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it was gaining market share there. Nokia's contracts with the American government include providing telecommunication services to the Department of Defense and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Contracts that were separately awarded to Nokia-Siemens, a joint venture, were not included in the company's totals here."  From 2000-2009, the company was the recipient of $16.6 million US federal funds.  Their business in Iran is currently active.  (The New York Times, "Profiting from Iran, and the US," 3/6/2010)

--

"...the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts. The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed." (WSJ, 6/22/09)

--

"Saber Feyzi, managing director of TCI said sanctions havent stopped IT providers from selling to Iran as contracts for equipment such as switches and transmission and radio systems show. Companies including Siemens, Nokia , Eriksson, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Telaps, NEC, ZTE, Huawei Technologies Co and Wuhan Research Institute have all supplied the Islamic republic. Iranian officials have dismissed US sanctions as inefficient, saying that they are finding Asian partners instead. Several Asian firms are negotiating or signing up to deals with Iran." (Thai Press Reports, "IRAN IRAN TELECOM CO TO OFFER 50% STAKE BY MARCH," 1/14/09)

--

Listed by U.S. Government as doing business in Iran. (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, List of Companies Doing Business With State Sponsors Of Terror, Removed from the internet in July of 2007)

--

"GIANTS WITH A FOOT IN TEHRAN: Total, Shell, Statoil, BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, MTN, UPS, Linde, Technip, Nokia, Ericsson, Peugeot, Renault, OMV, Societe Generale, ENI, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Siemens, LG, Samsung, Bosch, Valeo, Nestle, Unilever, BAT, Japan Tobacco." (The London Times, "American pressure threatens UK firms," 5/27/06)