Afshin Mohebbi is an Iranian-born United States businessman, best known as the former president and Chief Operating Officer of Qwest Communications International.

Education and background

A US citizen, Mohebbi was born in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

and raised in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Mohebbi received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering with an emphasis on communications systems from the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...

, in two years when he was only 18 years old. He followed this up with a Telecommunications Engineering Certificate from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

. He also has an MBA (dean's scholar) from the University of California.

Career

Starting in 1983, Mohebbi undertook a series of posts in sales and marketing with Pacific Bell, including vice president-business markets; and later with SBC Communications. He then became president and managing director of British Telecom's United Kingdom Markets division, an $18 billion business unit serving 20 million consumers and 1.5 million businesses in the UK. At 34, he was the youngest BT Managing Director to lead a major division. After 20 months Mohebbi left to join Qwest, managing the company's line operations, including market-facing business units; network engineering and operations; information technology and staff support functions. At age 36, Mohebbi became the youngest ever president of a major telecommunication company in the United States. He was appointed as co-chairman of merger integration for Qwest's merger with telephone company US West. Later he also joined the board of

BearingPoint BearingPoint (parent company: BearingPoint Europe Holdings B.V.) is a multinational management and technology consulting firm headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It has operations in 24 countries with around 6,200 employees. The firm origi ...

, when it signed a deal with Qwest to sell professional services.

Allegations of fraud at Qwest

On March 15, 2005, Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, Mohebbi and six other former Qwest executives were sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. They were accused of a $3 billion financial fraud between 1999 and 2002 and of benefiting from an inflated stock price. On March 31, 2011, United States Federal Judge Marcia Krieger issued a summary judgement dismissing the SEC's suit against Mohebbi. Nacchio was convicted of 19 counts of

insider trading Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider informati ...

in Qwest stock on April 19, 2007. Mohebbi testified during Nacchio's trial.

References

External links

Profile at Athena Technology ventures
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mohebbi, Afshin Living people American people of Iranian descent University of California, Los Angeles alumni BT Group people Year of birth missing (living people)