Malagasy tycoon Mamy Ravatomanga is charged over five Boeings that were flown to Iran

Five Boeing 777s that once flew for Singapore Airlines were given temporary Malagasy registration in January 2025, on paperwork saying they were going to Kenya for maintenance. Six months later they landed in Tehran.

They are now flying for Mahan Air, the Iranian carrier the United States has sanctioned since 2018 for ferrying weapons and personnel for the Revolutionary Guard.

Thirty-three people and companies went on trial in Antananarivo on Tuesday, Sept. 22, over how that happened. Among them is Mamy Ravatomanga, one of Madagascar's wealthiest businessmen, who did not appear because he is sitting in a Mauritian jail.

The court adjourned the case to Oct. 27 the same day. Judges at the Pôle Anti-Corruption have summoned Ravatomanga and the Civil Aviation Authority of Madagascar, and gave both a month to answer.

They dealt with bail instead. The court heard 18 applications for release, granted six and sent twelve defendants back to prison. Those freed included a 74-year-old woman whose house had been used as the registered address of a company called Udaan Aviation, along with a courier, a driver and a security guard.

Valéry Ramonjavelo was refused. The former transport minister has been held at Imerintsiatosika prison since March.

The other defendants include retired General Richard Ravalomanana, a former president of the Senate, Colonel Gervais Damasy, who ran the civil aviation authority, and an Indian businessman named Khushwinder Singh. Five companies are charged, among them Udaan Aviation.

Prosecutors have brought charges of undermining the sovereignty of the state, abuse of office, corruption, forgery of public documents, usurpation of official functions, criminal conspiracy and money laundering. A Constitutional Court ruling in March cleared the way for a former minister and a former head of an institution to be tried at the anti-corruption court.

What the paperwork allowed was three months. The civil aviation authority issued provisional registration and airworthiness certificates for the aircraft in January 2025, under a project Udaan Aviation put to it, covering ferry flights scheduled between April 17 and 21 that never took place.

The aircraft moved in July, after the documents had expired. All five left Cambodia on July 15, routed through Afghanistan to Tehran, and aviation trackers identified them by the Malagasy tail numbers they were still carrying.

The authority said afterwards that its authorisations had lapsed and that documents had been falsified. Ramonjavelo was sacked days after the story broke. Specialists from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation helped the Malagasy investigation that followed.

Ravatomanga, 56, appeared among Madagascar's ten wealthiest people in a Forbes ranking in 2017 and was close to Andry Rajoelina, the president the army removed in October 2025.

A Malagasy court issued a warrant for his arrest on money laundering charges on Oct. 16, after that change of government, and Madagascar asked Interpol for a red notice. He was already in Mauritius, where his assets were frozen and where the Financial Crimes Commission arrested him in November at a clinic in Phoenix. He faces a provisional charge of conspiracy there and two counts of money laundering, and his lawyers have told the court he is medically unfit to attend.

Malagasy newspapers have reported that Udaan Aviation was linked to Sodiat, the conglomerate Ravatomanga owns. He has not been convicted of anything in either country.