Wednesday
Oct282009
Iran: Are There Billions of Dollars Missing?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 9:49
The Latest from Iran (28 October): No Lull
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Rooz Online and The Inquistr website are featuring a report by Iran's State Audit Organization which found discrepancies of $66 billion in Government accounts, an amount equivalent to Iran’s average annual oil revenues.
The basics of the report were revealed months ago, but the extent of the missing funds came out Monday in Farda News, which is linked to Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.
The largest of the budget discrepancies concern $35 billion of imported goods. Iran’s Central Bank reported almost $220 billion in purchases between 2005 and 2008, but Custom documents only $185 billion of goods arriving in the country. There are also gaps between reported revenue through exports of oil and other goods and deposits in the country’s central bank. Iran’s oil ministry recorded $255 billion from oil sales between 2005 and 2008, but Iran’s Central Bank reported receipt of $280 billion.
How should the "missing" billions be interpreted? Dr Seyed Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran contends that the amount is due to a dispute between the Ministry of Oil and the auditors over "different ways of carrying out their auditing". Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi, a fervent critic of the regime, claims that the cause is "economic mismanagement" with "liberal use of state revenue to fund activities that are not necessarily audited, such as nuclear procurement, terrorism and funding insurgencies abroad".
Receive our latest updates by email or RSS SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Buy Us A Cup of Coffee? Help Enduring America Expand Its Coverage and Analysis
Rooz Online and The Inquistr website are featuring a report by Iran's State Audit Organization which found discrepancies of $66 billion in Government accounts, an amount equivalent to Iran’s average annual oil revenues.The basics of the report were revealed months ago, but the extent of the missing funds came out Monday in Farda News, which is linked to Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.
The largest of the budget discrepancies concern $35 billion of imported goods. Iran’s Central Bank reported almost $220 billion in purchases between 2005 and 2008, but Custom documents only $185 billion of goods arriving in the country. There are also gaps between reported revenue through exports of oil and other goods and deposits in the country’s central bank. Iran’s oil ministry recorded $255 billion from oil sales between 2005 and 2008, but Iran’s Central Bank reported receipt of $280 billion.
How should the "missing" billions be interpreted? Dr Seyed Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran contends that the amount is due to a dispute between the Ministry of Oil and the auditors over "different ways of carrying out their auditing". Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi, a fervent critic of the regime, claims that the cause is "economic mismanagement" with "liberal use of state revenue to fund activities that are not necessarily audited, such as nuclear procurement, terrorism and funding insurgencies abroad".
Reader Comments (4)
This is one example where the country revenew ends up.
Yemenis intercept 'Iranian ship' :
A boat carrying Iranian weapons destined for Yemeni rebels has been intercepted in the Red Sea, local Yemeni officials have said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8327892.stm
$66Bil , hmmmh, i wonder how many truck loads of Gold and US$ that would be?
18.5 Billion of it, is in Turkey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGeTc92p4v0
http://iran.whyweprotest.net/news-current-events/26332-iran-looks-into-18-billion-transfer-turkey.html
From: http://iranpoll2009.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/thursday-july-30-the-daily-story/
An $18.5bn mystery — Question: how can $18.5 billion (yup that’s a ‘b’ not an ‘m’) disappear into thin air? Answer: simple. Just send it to Turkey in a security truck. Then it simply vanishes, the authorities who bragged about it suddenly deny all knowledge of it, and the mysterious Iranian businessman who is said to be the owner is apparently left whistling for his money.
Confused? We haven’t even started. Our story begins, by the few accounts we have, with a recent speech by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, boasting that this enormous sum had been transferred to Turkey, which demonstrated his government’s success in attracting foreign investment despite the global economic downturn. Apparently, however, he did not reveal anything about where the money had actually come from. Enter Turkey’s independent Kanal D television channel, with a pacy report about how the money was shipped into Iran by an Iranian businessman called Ismael Safarian-Nasab. The lengthy report, complete with (mocked?) shots of police cars escorting a security wagon, included a lengthy interview with Senol Ozel, the businessman’s Turkish lawyer, who said his client was a respected Iranian businessman and that the money was transferred to Turkey perfectly legally.
According to Kanal D the container-load of $7.5 billion and 20 metric tonnes of gold (you do the maths, I’m tired!) was delivered to Ankara Customs Office “by courier services” on October 7, 2008. Ozel said his client had decided to ship his wealth to Turkey because of a new ‘ask no questions’ foreign investment policy by an Ankara government desperate to shore up its depleted coffers. Kanal D explained that the Turkish government had adopted a new regulation dubbed the “Suitcase Law” to alleviate the harsh effects of the economic crisis, which basically allows anybody to take any amount of foreign currency into the country from anywhere without being scrutinised. But please don’t ask me where even an amazingly successful Iranian businessman gets that kind of money from. Nor whether you could actually fit that amount into one truck. I don’t know.
I don’t even know if the money – or the gold – actually exists. Because the Turkish government says it doesn’t. Ozel said his client now wanted to take his money back (maybe because Erdogan effectively blew the whistle on it), and reports pointed out how that would leave a sizeable hole in Turkish accounts. Then today Hayati Yazici, Turkish State Minister, said the claim was “false and baseless”. Aanadolu, Turkey’s official news agency, added that Turkish customs officials said such a container had never entered Turkey. Someone, somewhere is telling porkies. But the question is, who?
It went to bail out US corporations. After all, that where OUR tax money went too.