Member of Parliament: 17 Corruption Cases from the Ninth Parliament Have Disappeared

The representative of Robat Karim in the Tenth Parliament stated that during his membership in the Article 90 Commission of the Eighth Parliament, he pursued 17 corruption cases, including several cases of blatant violations in free zones and the Tourism Bank, but these cases have 'disappeared' in the Ninth Parliament. Hassan Norouzi, in an interview with the Iran newspaper on Saturday, June 22, mentioned that in 2010, the last year of the Eighth Parliament, he followed up on these 17 corruption cases in the Article 90 Commission, but there was 'no trace of those cases' in the commission's report regarding the status of the cases in the Ninth Parliament. He added that 'in any case, either the mentioned cases should have been resolved or remain unfinished, but neither of these situations is observed in this regard.' Mr. Norouzi was a member of the Article 90 Commission in the Eighth Parliament but did not succeed in being elected to the Ninth Parliament. This Tenth Parliament representative emphasized that the 'violations' in these cases were 'blatant and if referred to the judiciary, the accused would definitely receive sentences.' According to this representative, one of these cases involved the sale of land on Kish Island, where lands priced at four to five million tomans per square meter were sold for '40,000 tomans per square meter.' The Robat Karim representative in the Tenth Parliament also mentioned another case related to the Tourism Bank without providing details. The Tourism Bank was established during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency and during the leadership of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei and Hamid Baqai at the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization. After Ahmadinejad's government ended and the Eleventh Government came to power, several of his administration's managers were arrested on charges of economic corruption. Among them, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Ahmadinejad's first vice president, was sentenced to prison on charges of economic corruption. Hamid Baqai, Ahmadinejad's executive assistant and head of the Free Zones Organization, was also arrested last June on charges of 'embezzlement' and was released in January, and according to reports, he accompanied Ahmadinejad on his recent trip to Zanjan. The unresolved status of 'some corruption cases' in Iran comes as some analysts accuse the Iranian judiciary of 'political handling' of economic corruption cases and believe that the roles of government officials in these cases are usually not addressed. Meanwhile, Fereydoun Khavand, a university professor and economic expert, in an interview with Radio Farda, assessed the lack of press freedom to pursue economic corruption cases as one of the reasons for the spread of corruption in the Islamic Republic. Mr. Khavand emphasizes that the Iranian judiciary lacks the necessary cohesion to deal with corruption, and on the other hand, 'economic units that suffer from these corruptions do not have protective agencies to claim their rights in this regard.' In recent years, some officials of the Islamic Republic have been accused of involvement in economic corruption, but their cases have not yet been addressed. In this context, Amir Abbas Soltani, a member of the committee investigating the Babak Zanjani case in Parliament, accused the ministers of information, economy, oil, and the head of the Central Bank of Ahmadinejad's government of being 'involved' in the Babak Zanjani case. Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, the spokesman for the Iranian judiciary, announced on October 6, 2014, that 'investigations' were being conducted on three ministers and the head of the Central Bank of Ahmadinejad's government regarding the Babak Zanjani case. However, no report has been published regarding the presence of these government officials in court as defendants or witnesses. The former head of the Central Bank is currently a representative in the Islamic Consultative Assembly. According to the latest report from Transparency International on the state of corruption in government institutions and services, the judiciary, and political parties, Iran ranked no better than 130 out of 168 countries surveyed, and the Research Center of the Iranian Parliament also acknowledged in the last months of 2015 that members of 271 economic organizations in Iran believe that the index of economic corruption in government institutions has increased over the past two years.