Korek Telecom Accuses Iraq's Media Regulator of Deliberately Sabotaging Its Operations
The Kurdish telecom firm says the CMC's cancellation of a settlement agreement is illegal and coercive, and vows to pursue every available legal remedy to protect its subscribers and shareholders
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - Korek Telecom is not going quietly. In a forceful official statement released Wednesday, the company accused Iraq's Communications and Media Commission of deliberately obstructing its operations and described the regulator's decision to cancel a settlement agreement as illegal, coercive, and designed with a single purpose: to push Korek out of the Iraqi market.
The statement marks a significant escalation in what the company describes as a years-long campaign of institutional marginalization.
According to Korek, the company had agreed — on the guidance of the Iraqi Council of Ministers Presidency and the parliament's communications committee — to sign a settlement agreement and suspend its outstanding legal claims as a gesture of good faith.
What followed, the company says, was a deliberate act of obstruction: the CMC refused to accept a tax clearance document issued by the Kurdistan Region, creating an artificial barrier to the agreement's implementation.
On June 2, 2026, the CMC issued what Korek describes as a "coercive decision" cancelling the settlement outright. The company's statement is unsparing in its interpretation: the move was "a facilitation aimed at removing the company from the market."
Korek rejected the accusation that it had not been serious about implementing the agreement. "This is far from the truth," the company stated, pointing to a high-level delegation it dispatched to the CMC on May 31, 2026 — a visit during which, it says, the head of the implementation body "avoided the meeting" despite a pre-arranged appointment.
The company situates Wednesday's events within a pattern it says stretches back nearly two decades.
The CMC, Korek argues, has lost its impartiality and has been systematically depriving the company of its fundamental rights since 2007.
The cancellation of the settlement, in this reading, is not an isolated regulatory decision but the latest move in a protracted effort to squeeze Korek out of a market it has served for years.
The stakes, the company warns, extend well beyond its own commercial interests. It describes the CMC's conduct as irresponsible, one that damages the public treasury and harms millions of subscribers in Iraq's telecommunications sector.
Korek closed its statement with a direct message to its subscribers: the company will take its case to the courts and pursue every available legal and constitutional avenue to defend its rights and prevent any action that damages the interests of its shareholders or the people who depend on its network.
Whether Iraq's regulatory and judicial institutions are willing to provide that remedy — and whether the CMC's decision holds under legal scrutiny — will determine not only Korek's future in the Iraqi market, but the credibility of the regulatory framework governing one of the country's most strategically significant sectors.