A senior official from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has insisted that no-one from the semi-autonomous state in Iraq benefited from the trading of DNO shares and wants the exploration and production company to disclose all documents related to the matter in order to restore the KRG’s reputation.
Reuters reported that Khalid Salih is in Oslo as a representative for the KRG while the matter is being dealt with by both DNO and the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE).
“We haven’t made any financial gain at all, it’s more of a headache for us now,” Reuters reported Salih as saying.
Last week the KRG announced that it had suspended all of DNO’s operations in the semi-autonomous Iraqi state for a period of up to six weeks.
The dispute centres around a US$29.7 million share transaction between DNO and Genel Enerji where the Turkish company Genel took around a 5% stake in DNO.
An investigation by the OSE discovered that the KRG acted as an effective middleman through the use of a clearing account in the United Kingdom registered personally to Hawrami.
This led the OSE to accuse DNO of insider trading due to the KRG effectively becoming a DNO shareholder. Speculation was also rife both in Norway and abroad that due to the account being personal illicit personal gain could have been involved in the transaction
The situation was exacerbated when the OSE lifted the suspension on trading in DNO’s share, causing the shares to halve in value within a few hours.
This led DNO to threaten to leave the Norwegian bourse, a move that was welcomed by Salih.
“If DNO wanted to (leave the OSE), we would certainly support them because obviously there is a problem in their relationship with the stock exchange,” he was reported by Reuters as saying. “As far as KRG is concerned, that would be a very good solution for us.”
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