IRNA � Billionaire's Babak Zanjani's partners have contacted the Iranian Judiciary and said that they were game to pay his debts, but they have not made any payments yet, said the Iranian minister of petroleum on Saturday.

'They have also entered into some negotiations, but haven�t made any repayments,' said Bijan Zangeneh.

Zangeneh also said that Zanjani's debt, with its interest, has reached $ 3.5b adding that, however, all his assets that have been transferred to the Ministry of Petroleum reaches twenty thousand billion Rials (about $ 570m).

In order to buy time, Zanjani and his partners have repeatedly said that they intended to pay the debts, but the sanctions made it impossible.

Following the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the sanctions on Iran were lifted; still, no money has been given to the Iranian government ever since.

And the investigation done by Iran's Central Bank showed that all their accounts claimed to have the money were empty.

Iranian billionaire and business magnate Babak Morteza Zanjani (b. 1974), accused of withholding $2.7 billion belonging to Iran's Ministry of Petroleum, was arrested in late 2013.

He had access to the money in his attempts to facilitate Iran's oil revenue hindered by the sanctions against Iran, but misappropriated huge sums.

Zanjani had already said that net worth of his assets was $13.5 billion.

On 6 March 2016, proven guilty of embezzlement and spreading corruption on earth, he was sentenced to death.