Head of the Legal Affairs Department of the Gas Engineering and Development Company in an interview with the Public Relations Department:
Legal Affairs Department Has Nothing to Do with Administration, but Handles Judicial Cases
Born in 1966, Mr. Eshaq Mohammadi is a graduate of management course from the University of Tehran as well as a judicial law course from Tehran branch of Islamic Azad University. He was employed by the National Iranian Gas Company in 1989. He first worked with the personnel department of the company before working with other departments since 2000; he has been working with legal experts of the National Iranian Gas Company. From 2006, that is, about inception of the Gas Engineering and Development Company, he has been working as head of the Legal Affairs Department of the company.
Asked about activities of the Legal Affairs Department, Eshaq Mohammadi noted that the main duty of the department was land acquisition for implementation of gas projects. “It means that when a project is set out, the legal affairs takes action as the first group for acquisition of land and implementation of the project.”
He noted that land acquisition as well as formulating contracts and providing legal consultations are the main duties of the Legal Affairs Department.
“The most arduous task of the department is land acquisition because our staff should travel to cold and hot regions and are sometimes exposed to threats from landlords,” he added.
Mohammadi noted that there are no fixed property rights in Iran and “therefore, we must also account for landlords, tenants, commissions in charge of changing application of lands, environment departments, forestry and so on.”
“In many projects like road construction as well as power and telephone projects, landlords are willing for the projects to be implemented in the shortest possible time because when such projects are finished, surrounding lands gain in value. However, the opposite is true about gas projects, that is, at least, for 250 meters on every side of gas pipelines, people cannot start construction and cannot do anything in the surrounding land,” he said.
Head of the Legal Affairs Department of the Gas Engineering and Development Company then explained about the method of land acquisition, saying, “Pricing is mostly done by boards of experts comprising three members as representing three sides. One representative from the landlords, one representative from the company, and one member chosen through mutual agreement. During the past three years of my work in this department of the Gas Engineering and Development Company, we have not reached any critical point yet and in 98 percent of the projects, there has been no standstill due to problem with land acquisition.”
Explaining about integrity of legal affairs’ staff, he said, “We have 35 employees who are working on different projects. They include three people who are working on north and northeast pipeline project, 2 people who are working on Qazvin-Rasht pipeline project, 2 people who work on the 5th Saveh-Tehran project, one person working on Parsian refinery, three people working on Pol-e Kalleh projects and so on.”
Mohammadi concluded by saying that the department also follows up on all minor and major cases filed with judicial authorities.
“As for legal consultation, this department takes care of all legal problems facing management and executive sections. All contracts to be signed by the company should be first confirmed by this department before being distributed for the arrangement of tender bids. Also, the legal consultation is, in fact, embodiment of the principle which says “prevention takes precedence over treatment.”
Public Relations Department of the Gas Engineering and Development Company
