A Düsseldorf company apparently belongs to a network of companies owned by the Iranian state. Internal documents available to SZ and WDR suggest that the regime also uses this method to circumvent international sanctions.
The sophisticated town of Düsseldorf on the Rhine has always had a certain attraction for companies from Iran – and has sometimes put German security authorities on alert. In late autumn 1996, officers from the Customs Criminal Investigation Office searched the offices of the DIO company on Kaiserswerther Strasse twice. The abbreviation stands for Defense Industries Organization and was already considered the procurement company for the Iranian military in the 1980s. With the help of the DIO, the mullahs wanted to equip and upgrade their chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program. 40 years later, there is now apparently another company in Düsseldorf whose connections to the regime in Tehran are so close that the security authorities are also keeping an eye on them.