Member of Parliament: If Allowed, I Will Publish 30,000 Documents of Violations in the Martyrs Foundation

The head of the committee investigating the Martyrs Foundation in the ninth parliament stated that if the Speaker of Parliament permits, he will publish 30,000 documents regarding the violations of this institution during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency. According to the House of the Nation website, affiliated with the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Amir Khajasteh made these remarks on Friday, July 18, in response to comments made by Massoud Zaribafan, the former head of the Martyrs Foundation, who said that the investigative committee should present its evidence regarding the violations in the Martyrs Foundation, "and if you have as much evidence as a sugar cube, reveal it." The representative of Hamadan and Famenin in the tenth parliament dismissed unconfirmed reports about the closure of the investigation into the Martyrs Foundation and the Affairs of Veterans as "false" and reported the arrest of several individuals during the investigation into corruption within this foundation. He stated that Sadegh Larijani, the head of the judiciary, has ordered the investigation of this case in a special court. Mr. Khajasteh did not provide further details about this special court but added that "a number of individuals have already been arrested, and this work will continue with strength in the future." This parliament member explained that since the number of representatives in the ninth parliament did not reach the quorum needed to sign the investigation into the Martyrs Foundation, this matter was pursued through the judiciary, and the report was submitted to the Speaker of Parliament. He mentioned that he thought this case would have a "normal process" in the ninth parliament, but it had many complexities and there was no will to read it. Khajasteh explicitly spoke of "political pressures" from inside and outside the parliament that "prevented the investigation from reaching a conclusion." The representative from Hamadan, referring to what he called "the uproar of inefficiency and mismanagement in the Martyrs Foundation," expressed his readiness to publish "30,000 documents from this investigation" if allowed by Ali Larijani, the Speaker of Parliament. Khajasteh pointed to the existence of "numerous problems" in Bank Day, a subsidiary of the Martyrs Foundation, and other economic systems within this foundation, adding that through "efforts made, 500 billion tomans that had gone from Bank Day's exchange office to Dubai and part of the assets and a hotel were returned." The Hamadan representative also called for the "separation of economic systems" from the Martyrs Foundation. It was first in 2012 that news of a billion-dollar embezzlement in the Martyrs Foundation during Massoud Zaribafan's presidency was published. On June 10, 2013, parliament members approved the investigation plan into the "Martyrs Foundation and Affairs of Veterans" with 129 votes in favor. "Lack of financial transparency," "various suspicions in the economic sectors of the foundation," and "discovery of a 15 billion toman embezzlement" were among the reasons cited for pursuing this plan in parliament. However, as Khajasteh stated, "political pressures" prevented the reading of the investigative committee's findings in parliament. Meanwhile, in September 2013, Gholamali Jafarzadeh Imanabadi, a member of the investigative committee, reported financial corruption and "embezzlement" by many managers of this foundation. Mr. Imanabadi stated that the initial results of the investigations from the Martyrs Foundation indicated the occurrence of embezzlement in this foundation and that "we will certainly bring those accused of financial embezzlements to court." Prior to that, on August 5, 2012, the Khorasan newspaper reported the discovery of a 15 billion toman embezzlement in the Martyrs Foundation by the General Inspection Organization of the country, in which one of the former officials of this foundation was involved. The Martyrs Foundation is one of the wealthiest economic organizations in the Islamic Republic, operating in a wide range of activities from financial operations to livestock. This foundation, which is supposed to address the affairs of "veterans and the families of martyrs," has many economic, financial, and credit subsidiaries, and its budget in 2016 was over 9 trillion tomans.