Afghan Biographies

AWCC and Amin Ramin


Name AWCC and Amin Ramin
Ethnic backgr.
Date of birth
Function/Grade Afghan Wireless Communication Company Background
History and Biodata

Amin Ramin 3rd floor, building No.14, G branch, Cinema Pamir Kabul
Email: a.ramin@telsysint.com
Mobile: 0093 (0) 70 877877

2. Previous Functions:
Managing Director AWCC (20150301)
 

3. Biodata:

Amin Ramin was born 1968 in Afghanistan. Ramin hails from a grand Tajik family of warrior-patriots.

In 1984, he earned his cred among Afghans by helping kill Russians, a teenage mujahid fighting a jihad against the Soviet invaders of his beloved homeland. Ten years later - self-exiled to the U.S while those same mujahideen fought over the spoils of victory - Ramin was an apprentice millionaire in New York, pulling 18 hour days for $3 an hour in a Brooklyn greasy spoon he would build into the Luther’s Fried Chicken chain. In 2001 came September 11 and the U.S-led war that ousted Osama bin Laden’s Taleban hosts. For wealthy Afghan emigres like Ramin, 9/11 and the subsequent war that ousted the Taleban presented a business opportunity to re-build their shattered homeland with the cash and connections they’d made abroad.

He emigrated to the New Jersey, USA and holds an US-Passport. After 2001 he returned to Afghanistan to rebuild together with AWCC’s chairman, Ehsan Bayat. Bayat -  son of a Kabul doctor - who emigrated to the U.S. in 1981, was running a frozen-food distribution company in New Jersey when he got the idea to start a wireless network in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has signed contracts with cellcos MTN Afghanistan and Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC) to extend coverage to unserved communities. The contracts are worth a total of AFN365 million (USD4.2 million) and cover the deployment of mobile networks in 33 remote areas of the Kandahar, Nuristan, Badakhshan, Uruzgan, Zabul, Kunar, Nangarhar and Kabul provinces.(20230622)

AWCC is a core part of the Bayat Group (www.bayat-group.com), Afghanistan’s largest private company and employer.
 

Background:
Ramin with other Afghan refugees formed Telephone Systems International (TSI). That was the easy part. Cutting a deal with Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers, who swept into power in 1996, proved painfully slow. “The wheels were in motion,” Ehsan Bayat says, “but nothing was happening.” Finally, in 1998, TSI signed a joint-venture agreement with Afghanistan’s Ministry of Communications and promised to invest $150 million in AWCC in exchange for 80% ownership of the company.

It was money Bayat and Ramin didn’t have. So they pulled together an eclectic group of partners, among them Lord Michael Cecil, an English aristocrat-businessman and principal in one of Africa’s leading mobile phone companies, Kenya-based Wilken Telecommunications; Olaf Guerrand-Hermès, an heir to the Hermès fashion empire; and Gary Breshinsky, a then 48-year-old New Jersey satellite phone salesman who claimed to have been a CIA asset. They all came together at a meeting with Taliban officials in Kandahar in November 1998.

As an American citizen, Bayat’s  and Ramin's dealings with the Taliban were a game of cat-and-mouse over the extent of his business links with what became, after the August 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, an outlaw regime. The joint venture agreement creating AWCC was signed in September 1998, shortly after retaliatory U.S. airstrikes on al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Bayat claims that TSI divested its AWCC interest in July 1999 and only bought it back after U.S., UN, and British sanctions were lifted in 2002. But he says he can’t remember much about this period—one former associate says a Liechtenstein company may have owned AWCC for a while—and couldn’t provide any evidence that a divestment took place.

Meanwhile, AWCC pressed ahead with building its network during this time and currying favor with the Taliban regime. In 2000, a British supplier of reconditioned telecommunications hardware installed rudimentary switching equipment for AWCC in Kabul and Kandahar. On one of their visits to the country, Cecil and his British business partner, Stuart Bentham, who also owned a piece of TSI, donated cricket equipment to the government. The two also set up a mining company called Afghan Development.

By December 2001, Kabul was overflowing with military, UN, and foreign advisors. All were desperate for communications. The new interim administration honored the Taliban contract with TSI, and by April 2002 AWCC had launched a phone and Internet service in the capital. At last, one of the planet’s few telecommunications holdouts had been breached.

Cecil and Bentham are suing Bayat in federal court in New York over the 30.2% of TSI they claim they own. Bayat insists he is the sole owner of the company, but the documents which he says prove his case are under seal. A May 2002 filing by TSI with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission that is part of the case file acknowledges that Bentham and Cecil each own 15.1% of the company. Bayat is listed as having a 51% stake, and the ownership of the remaining 18.8% is not specified. Cecil and Bentham say they are legally constrained from commenting on the dispute, but their New York attorney, Robert Friedman of Kelley Drye, says, “We are looking forward with enthusiasm to our day in court.”

Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), headquartered in Kabul, now is a large investor in Afghanistan. Besides AWCC, Roshan, MTN and etisalat private mobile phone companies are also operating in Afghanistan at the moment (201001). Afghan Wireless is also a large employer of Afghans in Afghanistan, employing approximately 3,000 people directly and another 30,000 indirectly. AWCC is a leader in delivering wireless and broadband communication solutions to residential and business customers.

The company has a strong reputation for philanthropy, supporting charitable organizations, assisting orphans, women, hunger relief and education through its own efforts and in conjunction with the Bayat Foundation. AWCC in collaboration with Azizi Bank which is one of the largest Banking group’s in Afghanistan has launched Mobile Banking Service for it’s valued customers by signing the contract. Mr.Amin Ramin, Managing Director AWCC and Haji Ali Akbar Voice Chairman Azizi Bank signed a contract. AWCC customer having it’s account in any Azizi Bank branch can apply for this service and enjoy the facility to get information like Balance Inquiry OR Mini Statement of their bank account while they are on the GO! Mobile banking is easy and offered to Azizi Bank customers having AWCC connections for just 3.5Af/SMS.

Mohaymen Sahebzadah, Director of Radio Frequency Engineering for TSI, the U.S. parent company of Afghan Wireless (20030805),
Mohaymen Sahebzadah, AWCC’s signals expert (20041018)

Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), Kam Air, Afghanistan International Bank (AIB), Saladin Security Company, Alokozay International Limited, Alokozay non-alcoholic beverage company, Automotive Service and Yenco Limited Construction Company (VICC) were awarded as best large taxpayers in Continental Hotel in Kabul. (20170502)

Last Modified 2023-06-22
Established 2009-10-12