Every day, new cases of astronomical corruption come to light, either through Iran’s regime-controlled media or due to internal disputes among its officials.
From Friday prayer leader Kazem Seddiqi, accused in a corruption case involving a land deal where he and his children acquired a lush 4,200 square meters of garden in Tehran’s Ozgol area, to Tehran’s mayor Alireza Zakani, who suddenly had news revealed about signing a secret contract worth two billion euros with a relatively unknown Chinese company to purchase buses and taxis.
This contract was secretly concluded, to the extent that even some members of the city council learned of its contents only after it was published in the media. It reached a point where the head of the council’s legal committee remarked, “We are facing a mayor and a municipality that avoids scrutiny; we don’t even have access to the text of the multi-billion-dollar deal with the Chinese.”
The list of implicated officials is long, with almost all the regime’s authorities involved in corruption cases. Now, in internal disputes among regime officials, a new name has been exposed: Ali Akbar Raefipour, a social media personality of the regime and the founder and head of Masaf Institute, who consistently attacked regime officials for their corruption and wrongdoing.
Entekhab, a state-run website, reported, “It has been revealed that more than 100 billion tomans have been transferred to Raefipour’s Masaf Institute.” This revelation came after Raefipour attempted to organize an attack against the regime’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.
Bahar News, another regime-affiliated website, added, “The transactions of Saderat Bank linked to Masaf show that this institution has had non-transparent financial transactions totaling about 100 billion tomans from four account numbers of Bank Mellat, Meli, Sepeh, and Saderat, under the guise of a charitable institution.”
Jalil Mohebi, former secretary of the regime’s Headquarters for Enjoining the Good and Forbidding the Evil, remarked, “According to the law, Raefipour should be imprisoned for up to 5 years.”
Interestingly, documents of continuous payments by Masaf Institute to certain virtual activists were suddenly published, garnering wide attention in the virtual space. In one instance, 1.45 billion rials were paid to a user with the nickname Khorshid Khanum to participate in elections and advertise for them.
In another case, among the deposits of this institution, the name of a foreign girl named Elona Vashchenko appeared, who received significant funds from the institute in five consecutive transactions to appear in front of the camera and introduce herself as ‘Tahera Vashchenko’.
Bahar News explained further, “Masaf’s transactions in Saderat Bank indicate that from 2022, about 50 billion tomans were deposited into Masaf under the ambiguous title of public donations. However, no report has been published on its distribution, and this amount was dispersed among hundreds of project beneficiaries and money laundering companies. The name of a media activist known as Arzeshi has been frequently seen among the depositors.”
What’s more intriguing is that the authorities of this regime, who should theoretically pursue legal action against all these financial corruptions, are instead fervently seeking to find and arrest the whistleblowers of this scandal.
Following the revelation of the 100 billion tomans stolen by Raefipour’s affiliated institution, the head of the regime’s central bank, fearing its consequences, ordered his deputies and the head of the bank’s protection center to prepare a comprehensive report on the matter and relevant individuals, while carefully examining the release of financial information from this institution.
But this is just a glimpse of the corruption within this regime. Kamal Athari, an expert in economic development, admitted to the looting by the regime’s mafia and stated:
“An average of 50 billion dollars is taken out of the country in the form of rents, and depending on the amount of oil revenues, we have capital outflows from Iran ranging between 30 and 80 billion dollars annually.
“What we are experiencing is not a capitalist system, but rather a system of neo-feudalism with a capitalist base that hinders production and reproduction. Instead of bringing rent into the production cycle, it is siphoned out of the country.
“Estimates show that an average of 50 billion dollars is taken out of the country in rent annually. Tarbiat Modares University has conducted research on this issue and has shown that depending on the amount of oil revenues, we have an outflow of capital from Iran ranging between 30 and 80 billion dollars annually.”
Corruption in Iran extends far beyond isolated incidents. It permeates the entire system, hindering economic development and enriching a select few at the expense of the Iranian people. The regime’s focus on silencing whistleblowers rather than addressing these issues reveals a deep-seated lack of accountability and commitment to genuine reform.
Source » ncr-iran