Research Report: The Budget of the Institution Led by Kazem Sediqi Equals the Monthly Wages of 24,000 Workers

The Open Data Iran database has dedicated its recent research to examining the annual budget of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Headquarters. According to the findings, the annual budget of this headquarters, headed by Kazem Sediqi, who is a cleric close to Ali Khamenei, is equivalent to the minimum monthly wage of 24,000 workers. Kazem Sediqi, who has been managing the Tehran seminary and has headed the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Headquarters since 2018, has recently faced allegations of financial corruption and land grabbing in northern Tehran. The research indicates that in the 2023 budget, 127 billion tomans from public resources have been allocated to the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Headquarters, while the minimum base wage set for workers last year was 5 million and 308 thousand tomans. The database's investigations show that between 2017 and 2023, nearly 360 billion tomans of public budget resources have been allocated to the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Headquarters, a budget that, considering inflation, exceeds 800 billion tomans at current prices. The funding for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Headquarters in the annual budget has increased significantly since Kazem Sediqi's presidency (2017-2023). The research also notes that there are no defined programs or indicators in the budget laws for evaluating the performance of this religious-promotional institution. Furthermore, this headquarters has so far refused to provide a financial performance report, making it unclear how this amount of budget is being spent. In comparison, the budget of the Promotion of Virtue is several times larger than that of many educational and research institutions that have specific agendas and performance metrics. For example, the budget of this headquarters is about four times that of the Research and Planning Institute for Higher Education, which is responsible for planning and developing higher education across the country.