If Reports Are Published, Some Officials Will Leave Iran

The head of the country's General Inspection Organization stated that if certain reports reviewed by this organization are published, there will be nothing left for some officials, and they will leave Iran. According to ILNA, Iran's Labor News Agency, Nasser Seraaj emphasized on Wednesday during the Human Rights Day ceremony that there is a legal prohibition on publishing these reports; otherwise, many individuals would not be able to remain in Iran if some existing reports in the Inspection Organization were released. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, had previously stated regarding such incidents occurring in society: 'They should not stretch the issue too much.' The issue of the legal prohibition on the publication of reports existing in the Inspection Organization raises questions. Should silence be maintained solely due to what is termed a 'legal prohibition' when financial corruption occurs, or when power is abused, or when people's lives are neglected during recent floods in Tehran and Alborz provinces? Reza Alijani, a political activist and member of the National Religious Activists Council residing in Paris, believes that the root of all these justifications goes back to a principle established by Mr. Khomeini, which is 'the interests of the regime.' Khamenei has also explicitly stated several times that 'do not stretch it out,' and 'these issues should not be brought to light; the regime's reputation is at stake.' This is the essence of the regime's interests. The theory of the regime's interests is one of the worst and most detrimental theories produced within power after the revolution. Here, it is neither the interests of the people, nor the issue of Iran, nor even the issue of Islam, but rather the interests of the regime. 'Regime' in Iran is a pseudonym for power. It is a pseudonym for those at the top of power and sometimes a pseudonym for the leader himself. When it is said that 'the regime' does not agree, it means that the person referred to is Khamenei. Here, this interest is the regime's interest and the government's reputation. However, this is the biggest factor of corruption. It has been proven worldwide that there is a direct correlation between freedom of expression and the reduction of corruption, between press freedom and the reduction of corruption. During Khatami's presidency, when there was more freedom, the least corruption reported was from that period. This means that in a period where public opinion can monitor, journalists can pursue a case to the end without facing security threats and punishments, corruption decreases. Another issue is favoritism and rent-seeking, which has become an inherent characteristic of the government; that is, those who are allies and insiders can do anything without issue, but if an insider steps out of line for even two days, they become an outsider and can be dealt with. The issue of corruption in Iran has reached specific dimensions that are fundamentally hard to believe. It is still unclear what happened to the vast majority of Iran's oil revenues, which skyrocketed during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's two presidential terms, to the extent that some claimed with documents and comparative price tables that it exceeded all periods of oil discovery and production in Iran. Even when one of the suspects in the disappearance of this money is arrested, they simply refuse to disclose the location of the funds, to the point where Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, the Minister of Oil, stated in a live television program regarding Babak Zanjani: 'It is not even clear where this money is.' The head of the General Inspection Organization had previously stated that 'in recent years, the law has been neglected in Iran, and government agencies have also fallen short in combating corruption.' He stated: 'It has been 14 years since the leader's eight-point message regarding the fight against corruption, but how has the performance of the agencies been in implementing this message?' Iran is among the countries with the highest levels of administrative corruption, ranking 144th out of 177 countries in the 2013 Transparency International report. However, this statistic improved somewhat in 2014, with Iran receiving a rank of 136.