Ahmad Tavakkoli: The System and Government Have Been Captured by a Network of Corruption

Ahmad Tavakkoli, a member of the Expediency Discernment Council of the Islamic Republic and chairman of the board of the organization known as "Watchdog for Transparency and Justice," stated: "Corrupt individuals, by employing networks within sensitive institutions and infiltrating decision-making channels, legalize corrupt processes." According to the Jamaran news agency, Tavakkoli pointed out at the eighth national conference of the members of the "Watchdog for Transparency and Justice" that, despite this network, the allocation of resources and positions is done unjustly. He emphasized that some people use the law to corrupt the system, adding: at this stage, combating corruption is difficult because one is accused of being against the law. The chairman of the board of the "Watchdog for Transparency and Justice" stated, "Worse than this is the capture of elites or the capture of the government, meaning that government officials are mocked in various ways." This member of the Expediency Discernment Council commented on the lack of action regarding this issue, stating that many individuals are complacent because they are under the influence of the dominance of corrupt individuals. In recent years, organized corruption in the Islamic Republic has always made headlines, and the number of discovered corruption cases, the volume of corruption, and the direct connection of these corruptions with the government and ruling system have been newsworthy. In this context, on March 6, Voice of America reported on a document obtained during the hacking of the judiciary, which was provided to them by the hacking group "Justice Ali," revealing a financial corruption case worth tens of millions of dollars involving public assets at the Khatam al-Anbia headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to this document, a former official of the Khatam al-Anbia headquarters, an economic subsidiary of the IRGC, caused "significant losses" to public assets by "abusing their position" and purchasing bankrupt companies, pocketing millions of dollars. In recent months, numerous cases of economic corruption at high levels of the Islamic Republic have been exposed. According to this report, embezzlement accompanied by forgery in the payment of 244 marriage loans in Qom, the disappearance of 17 trillion tomans from the Tehran municipality budget, and the allocation of a subsidized currency of 3.37 billion dollars to a tea importer are just examples of financial corruption in the Islamic Republic that have been revealed in recent months. Additionally, in December of this year, Ahmad Tavakkoli revealed in a letter to Ebrahim Raisi, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, an unprecedented rent regarding the issuance of an import license for 13 million tons of essential goods to a "newcomer" company classified as "completely confidential." Some experts say that in the Islamic Republic, regardless of who the head of government is, the organized network of corruption and economic mafia continues its activities. Ali Afshari: The expansion of systematic corruption in the Islamic Republic is due to the theory of Velayat-e Faqih.