Korek must pay $330m and change management to resume operations, regulator says

ERBIL — Korek Telecom must pay 500 billion dinars (about $330 million at the official rate) and present a federal tax clearance before it can resume operations, the chief executive of Iraq’s Communications and Media Commission said.

Baligh Abu Kalal, who heads the regulator’s executive body, said at the Erbil International Book Fair that the payment would be a first installment on the Kurdistan Region-based mobile operator’s debts. He put those debts at more than 2 trillion dinars (about $1.3 billion). The tax clearance must come from the federal Finance Ministry, he said.

If Korek meets both conditions, the commission is ready to sign a new settlement and let the company return to work, Abu Kalal said. He added that the commission had formally asked for a change in Korek’s management, a right he said the contract grants it.

He urged Korek subscribers to keep their numbers, saying the commission wanted to preserve the lines.

The commission has also told Korek users to secure their online accounts before Nov. 1, after which it says it will go ahead with switching off the company’s exchanges. It first set the deadline for the end of September, then extended it by a month at the request of parliament’s Transport and Communications Committee.

Users should add numbers from other carriers to accounts that allow more than one and switch to one of those numbers where only one is allowed, the commission had previously said. It also advised backups such as email or authenticator apps, so users keep receiving verification codes and are not locked out. It said this was not a call to throw away Korek SIM cards or give up the numbers.

The conditions follow a Sept. 28 ruling by the Rusafa Court of First Instance in Baghdad that annulled the commission’s June decision to cancel Korek’s settlement and kept the agreement in force. Korek welcomed the ruling and called on the regulator to turn the page on the dispute.

The commission responded that the ruling did not return Korek to operation or lift its other measures, which it said rest on the expiry of Korek’s mobile license in August 2022. The company’s offices would stay closed and its debts to the state still stood, the commission said.

The regulator moved against Korek on Aug. 9, saying it was shutting down the operator’s network and equipment and placing liens on its assets after canceling the settlement over breaches of its financial and legal obligations. It told subscribers to stop topping up balances and renewing subscriptions but to keep their SIM cards. Korek replied the same day that the commission’s chief executive had no authority to cancel the settlement and asked Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to intervene.

The commission and the National Security Service shut Korek’s headquarters in Baghdad’s Jadriya district and three sales centers in Arasat, Palestine Street and Mansour on Aug. 20. A Rusafa court suspended the regulator’s decisions three days later, but the commission said the same court lifted that order on appeal. By Sept. 6, when it shut Korek sites in Kirkuk, Nineveh and Salah al-Din, the commission had closed its offices in eight governorates.

The commission said in April that Korek owed about 1.4 trillion dinars (about $1.06 billion at the time) under a settlement signed in September 2025, with liabilities still accruing.

The dispute dates to the 2007 mobile license auction. The commission says Korek still owes $375 million from it, while Korek says that payment depended on the regulator handing over the subscriber base of the former Iraqna network, which it says never happened.