Corruption in Iran: Clerics Plan to Hang Businessmen
March 02, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - While the US government is controlled by the super-wealthy class that constitutes about one percent of its population, Iran is controlled by a few Islamic clerics, their relatives, and cronies who came to power following the Iranian revolution in1979. The popularly elected president in Iran has much less power than the clerics who control the Islamic regime.
On February 3, 2013, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dropped a bombshell that shook the citadel of Iran’s clerical oligarchy. He played a video tape in the Iranian parliament that tied the heads of two branches of the government, the legislative and judiciary, to a documented financial corruption case related to the Larijani brothers. The five Larijani brothers are a part of the clerical oligarchy in Iran; two of them Ali and Sadeqh respectively head the legislative and the Judiciary branches of the government; the third brother Javad Larijani is the head of a human rights council; the fourth brother Bagher has held various posts in the government; and the fifth brother Fazel Larijani was a diplomat. Ali Larijani has at least 20 members of his family including two cousins and a brother in-law in the Iran’s parliament backing him. [1] Larijani brothers have very good relations with London and Washington. Their friendly family relations with the British go back to 1920s when the British were ruling Iraq and their friendship has continued to the present time.[2]
Financial Corruption in the Islamic Republic
Corruption in the Islamic Republic is nothing new; what was unprecedented was its revelation at a high level on the floor of the Iranian parliament by the President of the Islamic Republic. It was revealed to the public that Fazel Larijani is using his brothers’ influence to benefit from the state lucrative projects and receives kickbacks and bribes. The news has been widely reported and there is no need to describe it here (for example see New York Times).[3] The revelation of the corruption was a part of the battle that the president, the son of a blacksmith, is engaged in with the clerical oligarchy that holds power and has tried to marginalize the power of the president.
Two weeks later on February 18, 2013, in what appeared to be an act in retaliation to Ahmadinejad, the Iranian supreme court hastily upheld death sentences by hanging for three businessmen and a banker in a high-profile financial corruption case. The death sentence for a corruption case is unprecedented in the Islamic Republic. The accused in the case had been investigated by the judiciary headed by Sadegh Larijani. The case involved $2.8bn fraud by Mah-Afarid Khosravi, the CEO of a steel company who is accused of accumulating billions of dollars of wealth by financial scams. The court found Mah-Afarid Khosravi guilty of “disrupting the economic system”, according to Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the judiciary spokesman.[4] Khosravi allegedly forged letters of credit from Bank Saderat, a partially state-owned bank, and gave the fake documents to seven other banks, including Bank Melli, Iran’s largest state-owned bank. Also, Behdad Behzadi and Iraj Shojaei, Khosravi’s deputies for legal and financial affairs respectively, and Saeid Kiani-Zadeh, head of a Bank Saderat branch in the southern city of Ahvaz, were sentenced to death on similar charges. Others involved in the case received long prison sentences. It had also been attempted to link the case to Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the president’s Chief of Staff. But no such connection was announced by the court. The Iranian political observers think that the court issued the sentences hastily in retaliation to Ahmadinejad’s revelation of the documented corruption case involving the larijani brothers.
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