TEHRAN- The company that owns the UK-based broadcaster Iran International received £650 million of debt relief from its shareholders, strengthening the balance sheet of the prominent platform for anti-Iran voices.
The previously unreported debt-for-equity swap in December shored up the network’s finances, which claims to be the most-watched Persian news channel and has burnt through hundreds of millions of pounds since it was founded in 2017 with backing from British-Saudi investors.
It came shortly before protests erupted across Iran, marking the start of a turbulent period. Weeks later, the US and Israel launched a war on Iran, assassinating its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran International — which employs about 700 people globally — broadcasts into Iran from London through satellite, radio, and a massive social media following. Critics accuse it of pushing a pro-war narrative and using its reach to promote Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of the last shah.
The network has not disclosed the source of its funding, a decision that has long unsettled some of its journalists, who have privately raised concerns about its editorial decisions, said a person with direct knowledge of its operations.
Iran International’s parent company, Volant Media UK, has lost more than £410mn in the past five years and it owed related entities about £482 million, according to its last set of accounts covering the financial year ending December 2024. Volant also runs a separate network called Afghanistan International.
Volant claims it is editorially independent, has never received state funding from Saudi Arabia, Israel or elsewhere, and is backed by a consortium of private, commercial investors. It declined to comment on their identity.
Filings for Volant in the UK’s corporate registry show that an allotment of 648mn shares, valued at £648mn, was issued on December 13.
A separate confirmation statement shows that on the same date, all of Volant’s original 50,000 shares were transferred from the British-Saudi film executive Adel Abdulkarim Alabdulkarim, who serves as Volant’s company director and secretary, to the offshore company Info-Cast Cayman Limited.
The confirmation statement does not make any reference to the newly allotted shares or to whom they were allotted.
Abdulkarim remains listed as a person with significant control of Volant on the grounds he has the right to appoint or remove the majority of the company’s board of directors. Info-Cast Cayman was listed as the immediate parent company at year-end 2024.
The sole director of Info-Cast Cayman is Saleh Hussain Aldowais, according to Cayman corporate records consulted this month. A person with that name is the chief operations officer of state-backed Saudi Research and Media Group, the kingdom’s biggest media organization. SRMG did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Iran International said existing shareholder debt was capitalized into equity “in order to strengthen the company’s balance sheet”.
“No new funds were introduced at that point,” he claimed, adding that the network “has never received funding from any government or state entity — including Saudi Arabia or Israel — whether directly or indirectly”.
He said: “Where individuals associated with the business hold other external commercial roles, those interests are entirely separate?.?.?.?held in a personal capacity and have no bearing on the editorial, operational or financial independence of the network.”
Iran International is now subject to less stringent regulations as a notified on-demand program service, meaning it doesn’t have to adhere to Ofcom’s impartiality or offensive content rules. Abdulkarim, a director at OR Holdings and Investments Limited, also leads a TV and film production company that produces content for Iran International on which he is credited as executive producer on IMDb.
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