Attorney General's Directive on the 'Stalling' of Thousands of Smuggling Cases

Following the statements of the head of the Anti-Smuggling Headquarters in Iran regarding the existence of two thousand 'stalled' cases in the smuggling sector in the country's courts, the Attorney General's Office of Iran was tasked on Wednesday, December 5, to investigate the accuracy of this claim. Ali Moidi Khoramabadi, the head of the Anti-Smuggling Headquarters, recently stated that in terms of the 'quantity of cases, we have seen a significant increase, but several major cases have still not yielded results, and there are important cases as well.' He requested that the judiciary pay special attention to the 'massive volume of unresolved violations,' stating, 'We have identified two thousand cases at the national level in the field of smuggling goods and currency from organized networks that have not yielded results for eight years.' Mr. Moidi deemed this situation 'unacceptable' and noted that the value of these cases is 'two thousand billion tomans,' which should be deposited into the government treasury by the 'mafias,' but for reasons that the prosecutor's office must explain, this has not been done. Although the head of the Anti-Smuggling Headquarters indicated that this issue had been reported to the Attorney General, the official news agency of the judiciary reported on Wednesday night that Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the director general of the Anti-Smuggling Goods and Currency in the Attorney General's Office, has been assigned to verify the accuracy of Moidi's statements. According to Ali Akbar Bakhtiari, the head of the Attorney General's Office, the Attorney General, after learning of Moidi's statements, instructed the relevant deputy in the Attorney General's Office to request that the head of the Anti-Smuggling Headquarters provide documentation along with case numbers and the relevant adjudicating authority within one week. As the head of the Anti-Smuggling Headquarters stated: 'The majority of the cases that need to be executed are placed in the execution of judgments and are halted, likely due to reasons such as lack of manpower, equipment, and opportunity.' His statements came at a time when delays in addressing smuggling and economic corruption cases in the judiciary had previously been raised. However, Sadeq Larijani, the head of the judiciary, defended the performance of his administration, stating that one cannot rush in addressing such cases. On September 7 of this year, the Industries and Mines Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly announced that 'prolonged litigation and the lack of special courts and specialized judges for smuggling cases and the high volume of acquittals' have also led to 'inefficiency' in the process of addressing this phenomenon, rendering the fight against smuggling in Iran 'ineffective.' In Iran, numerous reports are published annually about the discovery and seizure of various smuggled goods and currency at the country's entry points, but the exact and official figure for this volume of smuggling is not available. According to the report from the Industries and Mines Commission, the current volume of smuggling in Iran eliminates nearly '600,000 job opportunities' nationwide. This figure is derived from the announcement by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence that each billion dollars of smuggling is equivalent to 50,000 job opportunities. Currently, Iran has 150 customs offices, through which a significant volume of smuggling occurs. Smuggling in Iran has become one of the most important economic problems and symbols of 'corruption' in the country, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, has called for smuggled goods to be 'burned' in response to the continuation of this situation.