Image by Fath Ali Shah Qhajar Royal Mintage
In his July 22 speech at the Ronald Reagan Library, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared, “Regime leaders — especially those at the top of the IRGC and the Quds Force like Qasem Soleimani — must be made to feel painful consequences of their bad decision making. We are asking every nation, every nation who is sick and tired of the Islamic Republic’s destructive behavior, to join our pressure campaign. This especially goes for our allies in the Middle East and Europe, people who have themselves been terrorized by violent regime’s activity for decades.”
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“The level of corruption and wealth among Iranian leaders shows that Iran is run by something that resembles the mafia more than a government.”
Last year, the Transparency Organization ranked Iran 130th out of 180 countries and declared the regime has low transparency and high corruption, reported Iran News Wire.
Mahmoud Sadeghi, a member of Iran’s parliament, defined corruption as a “broad systematic dilemma.” Ahmad Tavakoli, former parliament member, has said corruption is a “systematic” problem. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei even mentioned corruption to be a seven-headed dragon, saying if you cut one head off, you’re still left with another six. With all this said, when you hear new remarks uncovered by other sources, the depth of corruption in Iran is still shocking.
Pedram Soltani, vice chairman of Iran’s chamber of commerce said, “I think that more than 150 thousand billion Toman of the country’s financial flows are underground. It exists outside of tax monitoring and is practically money laundering.”
With this statement, he’s actually accusing Khamenei, but then again Khamenei holds Rouhani responsible.
The Keyhan daily, affiliated with the Supreme Leader, wrote on Monday that the parliament economic commission chairman announced, “In the final months of 2017, 30 billion dollars worth of Iranian currency was taken out of the country.” The $64,000 question then becomes, as Rouhani only attracted 3 billion dollars of foreign capital from the JCPOA, how did he manage to gather ten times that amount?
It’s interesting how the deputy chief of justice, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, put on a show about arresting 13 individuals in connection with corruption. He said the arrests were due to illegal exchange, corrupt financial dealings, and illicit trading of vehicles. Obviously he was whitewashing government activities.
One other headline in online media read, “Mighty Corruption File of the Past 25 Years.” It uncovered an 123 billion Toman embezzlement in the early 70’s that came as a shock to everyone. Shortly after, another corruption case from a few years later, was disclosed, of 3,000 billion Toman, setting a new record.
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The record for fraud that has yet to be been broken happened in 2013 for oil shipments worth 2.7 billion euro. In 2015, an oil rig went missing that was worth $124 million that added to the corruption list. Again in 2016, corruption was discovered from the Teacher’s Investment Fund and Capital Bank worth 8 thousand billion Toman.
The Islamic Republic’s scandal drum is beating hard and has turned into an international scourge. The seven-headed dragon has taken over terrorist operations in the region and the world, as well as espionage. It is time to make this record of deceit and theft known to the international community.
Originally posted at The Washington Times
