New Ambiguities in the Judiciary's Accounts

The case of the judiciary's billion-dollar accounts is not going to be easily resolved; with each passing day, new dimensions of this controversial deposit are revealed, only adding to the ambiguities and contradictions surrounding it. After the Minister of Economy and 210 members of parliament announced that, based on documents provided by Sadegh Larijani, they deemed the disputed deposit account of the judiciary's head to be 'Shari' and 'legal', Mahmoud Sadeqi, a reformist MP, has reported that they have only reviewed documents related to the principal accounts and are unaware of the interest on the deposits. Ali Tayebnia, the Minister of Economy, went to the Economic Commission of the parliament last week in response to Sadeqi's questions and told him that he is unaware of the amount of interest on the judiciary's accounts and the number of these accounts; he added that he only knows that an interest rate between 10% and 20% is deposited in an account named after the head of the judiciary. Mahmoud Sadeqi quoted the Minister of Economy in the newspaper Shargh, stating: 'The deposit account is in the name of the judiciary, and there are multiple accounts; however, the issue at hand is regarding the interest on these accounts, which are also in the name of Ayatollah Larijani. Regarding the nature of whether the accounts in his name are personal or governmental, based on the assessment of one of the officials at the Central Bank, these accounts are considered governmental. Furthermore, the minister stated that he has no information about the number and details of these accounts. It was agreed that based on the amount of money in these deposits, they would provide us with information.' He said, 'Since this interest has received permission, it does not go through the treasury process, and the Ministry of Economy is not aware of the amount and uses of it.' What has been reported from the Minister of Economy of Rouhani's government confirms a letter written by Mohammad Nourbakhsh, the then-head of the Central Bank, three years after the accounts were reopened to Mohammad Khatami, the head of the seventh government. He stated that the judiciary was permitted to open an account, in addition to the deposit accounts, a current account numbered 13112 in the name of the head of the Tehran judiciary so that the interest from the deposits, which was estimated to be 1.5 billion tomans by the end of July that year, could be deposited into that account. The mentioned permission from these two officials is the authorization given by Ayatollah Khamenei in that year to Ali Razini, the head of the Tehran judiciary, to open accounts aimed at compensating for the budget shortfall of the judiciary. These accounts were exposed in 1998 in newspapers by the late Nourbakhsh and have faced numerous protests and questions since then. Judiciary officials stated that 'to carry out the unfinished tasks of the judiciary and the multitude of cases awaiting processing and the inadequacy of credits, the head of the judiciary was asked for guidance, and he requested the Supreme Leader to allow the Tehran judiciary to invest some of the trust funds in the bank and use the profits from it, and the Supreme Leader agreed to this proposal.' However, the Central Bank deemed such claims false and announced in a statement that the request to reopen these accounts was made directly by Ali Razini to Ayatollah Khamenei, and although according to the agreement, the accounts were to be created in the name of the judiciary, and their funds were to be deposited into the public treasury, 'in this regard, the head of the judiciary had no correspondence with the Central Bank.' The Constitution explicitly states that all institutions, including the judiciary, must deposit received funds into the national treasury, and payments must be within the limits of the approved credits according to the law. Now, from Tayebnia's explanations to the Economic Commission of the parliament, it can be inferred that for the past 21 years, due to the 'permission of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic,' not only these accounts but also their profits do not go through the national treasury process. Another issue that has been raised by legal experts and politicians over the past two decades is the legal nature of the judiciary's accounts. Because the deposit funds, collateral, and similar matters are temporarily held in trust by the judiciary, these funds cannot be appropriated, changed, or converted without the permission of the owner of the trust, which is the public; thus, the judiciary's accounts have legal issues. However, the Minister of Economy, who initially rejected this claim, did not provide a convincing answer to the members of parliament: 'If you want the legal basis for it, well, the head of the judiciary is the chief judge of the country, is a jurist, and is the reference for adjudication. We have learned that a judge can rule on the life and property of individuals and intervene. Certainly, his judgment on the legal aspects of the matter is better than mine.' Under such circumstances, alongside the legal and religious ambiguities of the judiciary's accounts, the manner of spending the profits from these deposits is also a matter of question. The only information that the Minister of Economy of Rouhani's cabinet provided to the present representatives in the commission was that 'the expenses of the judiciary are spent under the supervision of the first deputy of the judiciary and the administrative-financial deputy, and reports of it have been sent to some responsible institutions. However, we, as the treasury, are not aware of it because a special permission has been obtained and is exempt from the treasury process.' These statements come at a time when he previously stated in a television interview that the mentioned accounts have been in the banking system for 20 years in coordination with the national treasury and the Central Bank. Ali Tayebnia's explanations to Mahmoud Sadeqi's questions not only did not clarify any dark points but also raised more questions. Two and a half months ago, the Telegram channel 'Amadnews' reported the existence of 63 personal accounts in the name of Sadegh Larijani, the head of the judiciary, adding that 250 billion tomans are allocated to these accounts annually. Although this claim was not confirmed by judicial officials. As rumors escalated, Mahmoud Sadeqi, during a warning in the public session of the parliament, asked the head of the judiciary to 'provide a report on the performance of his accounts over the past five years.' This request sparked a political uproar that brought the heads of the branches into the fray and led to the nighttime presence of Tehran's prosecutor's office agents in front of this representative's house to arrest him. Ultimately, with the entry of the Supervisory Board on the Behavior of Representatives as the authority to address the violations of parliament members, the statements of the Minister of Economy and the declaration of 210 members of parliament deeming the judiciary's accounts to be Shari and legal have calmed the uproar; however, with the new explanations from Ali Tayebnia, it does not seem that this time, unlike in 1998, the case of these accounts will be easily resolved.