Losses Unknown After Tehran Bank Robbers Pilfer Safety Boxes
State media has played down a bank heist that saw thieves break into at least 200 safety deposit boxes in a central Tehran branch of Iran’s largest bank.
State media has played down a bank heist that saw thieves break into at least 200 safety deposit boxes in a central Tehran branch of Iran’s largest bank.
Bank Melli (National Bank), which is state-owned, issued a statement Monday saying thieves had entered its branch near the University of Tehran and accessed fewer than 200 safety deposit boxes.
The bank is about half a mile from the headquarters and residence of Supreme Leaser Ali Khamenei.
Iran was in a four-day holiday from Thursday to Sunday marking the death anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic. Apparently, the robbers gained access from an adjacent building during the holiday, and it is not clear how long they were inside.
Officials said an investigation was underway, with several bank employees “under observation” for possible “dereliction of duty.”
The gall of the robbers has fed social media speculation, and even comparisons with famous bank robberies elsewhere in the world, like the 1983 Brink’s Mat heist in the United Kingdom. Bank Melli denied social media reports that 1,000 boxes had been breached and referred simply to an “incident” in a press release.
Most state media avoided lengthy reports while also denying that as many as 1,000 boxes had been breached. State broadcaster IRIB put the number of safety deposit boxes opened at 250, while others used the phrase ‘damaged boxes.’
Inside job?
IRIB said that the thieves appeared to have been familiar with the bank’s interior and had stolen the main device recording footage from surveillance cameras. IRIB revealed that the bank’s alarm was not connected to the police and had only sent a text message to the branch manager, who ignored it as the system had been prone to false alerts.
The robbery is seen by some as an ‘inside job,’ and by others as another example of official ineptitude following the collapse of a high-rise building May 23 in Abadan, a refinery city in the oil-rich Khuzestan province, which killed at least 40 people and is widely seen as the result of officials ignoring warnings from engineers in allowing the owner to add five more floors. The disaster led to anti-government protests in the province and elsewhere.
As 80 percent of the economy is controlled by the government, including the banking sector, ordinary people often see such incidents as the result of inefficiency, personal and political nepotism and in some instances corruption.
Media and officials in Tehran say it is not clear what the bank robbers stole from the safety deposit boxes, since banks have no information about what people put in these boxes, which are used to safely store personal mementoes, precious foreign currency, and gold coins bought as a hedge against inflation.
It is also not clear if there is any kind of insurance covering losses sustained by customers. One report last year suggested Iranians were keeping $25-$30 billion in cash “at home,” which would include money in bank deposit boxes.
In a long report that appeared on Tuesday on the official government news website IRNA and the official newspaper Iran Daily, President Ebrahim Raisi’s government tried to rebuttal those who say oil exports have decreased in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Global industry sources reported in May that Russia has started taking market share from Iran, especially in China, by offering more discounts. Reuters reported on May 19 that “Iran's crude exports to China have fallen sharply since the start of the Ukraine war as Beijing favored heavily discounted Russian barrels, leaving almost 40 million barrels of Iranian oil stored on tankers at sea in Asia and seeking buyers.”
The reports published in the government media indicate that the Raisi administration wants to dispel any sign of weakness in oil exports that it takes credit for. While it has little to show after 10 months in office, the government takes credit for increasing illicit oil exports despite United States’ sanction.
Iran’s currency has slipped to all-time lows against major currencies since March when nuclear talks with the West came to an abrupt pause and the prospect for a nuclear agreement that could lift sanctions is dimming by the day.
The government lifted food import subsidies in early May that led to a steep rise in prices triggering protests by a population impoverished after four years of high inflation.
The government’s denial of a loss in oil exports followed a two-track approach. First, the oil ministry was quoted as saying that demand and exports vary according to market conditions and it is trying to do its best to serve the nation’s interests.
“Supply and demand ratios in the global oil market are shaped by the policies of exporting and importing countries, the economic growth rate and other factors,” the ministry was quoted as saying by IRNA. It added that even if a supplier is eliminated from one market, the ratio of global supply and demand is not affected necessarily. Instead “the geography” of the market might change and Iran can try to sell its oil in new markets.
While the government mouthpiece, IRNA, tried to dispel the notion that Iran’s exports have fallen, the quotes from the oil ministry were vague and did not deny the news.
The government’s second tract was using its official newspaper, Iran Daily, to claim that oil exports have surpassed one million barrels per day, while international industry sources put the figure at around 700,000-800,000 barrels per day at best.
In its May report, Reuters cited shippers’ data that said about 40 million barrels of Iranian oil remained unsold on tankers, with 20 tankers “at anchor near Singapore as of mid-May.” The report also said that that Iranian exports to China dropped between 200,000 to 250,000 barrels per day, replaced by Russian oil after sanctions by US and other countries.
But IRNA insisted that from mid-March to mid-May, Iran was exporting around one million barrels, without citing the discounted price. If Iran charges $80 a barrel with a heavy discount, this could still generate around $2.5 billion a month. IRNA said that oil and petrochemical exports together totaled an average of $3.75 billion a month in this period, or $45 billion annually.