Iran Analysis: Corruption Within the Government?

Mr Verde writes for EA:

On Saturday, EA noted a speech by the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, claiming saying that fraud and corruption had been uncovered inside the Government (your 1945 GMT update on 7 March).

Keep your eyes on this story: it may be far more than a passing update.

Larijani's declaration was followed up by the reformist Parleman News, which headlined, “Presence of a senior government official at the top of the major multi-billion embezzlement network”.



Parleman claimed new information about Larijani's reference to an embezzlement case in a government business. The fraud, amounts to millions of dollars, involves a high-ranking government official, the manager of an insurance company, government managers, and other government employees.

The website says that there are efforts in progress to gain the consent of a superior to force the high-ranking official to resign.

It also says that billions of toomans were embezzled in order to be spent on some projects and some people.

Interpretation?

Parleman News is not an ordinary website. It belongs to the reformist Imam Khomeini Line party. Of course, that means the website has a political agenda in running its article, but the reformist party may have  access to important information that is not yet public.

The closing paragraph is interesting when it mentions the funds being" spent on certain projects". That suggests the money was stolen by officials from the official Government use to spend on their own causes.

The hot rumour going around is that the high-ranking official is First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi. This specific story follows months of chatter, some passed on by members of Parliament, that there are embezzlement cases against Rahimi and also that his university degree is fake.

None of this has been confirmed, but if the Rahimi angle turns out to be true. t could cause President Ahmadinejad some problems. If he concedes and allow Rahimi to resign and stand trial, this will damage his public standing amongst his supporters. However, if he resists the pressures for Rahimi to reign, in he could end up paying a heavy behind-the-scenes price, especially in his contest with a "conservative opposition" within the establishment.

Comments

[perry1949]

Then again, he could be referring to Ahmdinijad himself. There is no love lost between the two and there has been talk of AN stealing both from the time he was Mayor of Tehran and during his term as President. Maybe Larijani could get both AN and Rahimi.