Iran’s Government Tries To Ram Through Shady ‘Privatization’ Scheme
While Iranians, both officials and ordinary people, are deeply concerned over the regime’s plan to liquidate public assets, the parliament has come to support the move.
While Iranians, both officials and ordinary people, are deeply concerned over the regime’s plan to liquidate public assets, the parliament has come to support the move.
During a session on Monday, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) defended the plan that is criticized by many lawmakers who oppose granting immunity to the seven-man team responsible for its implementation.
The Government decided to sell public properties in November 2022 to raise money amid financial crisis and a large budget deficit. Similar past schemes implemented without proper rules and transparency have ended in scandals.
According to reports, the new privatization plan -- approved by the heads of the three powers of the government, President Ebrahim Raisi, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei and Ghalibaf -- bars critics of disclosing details of transactions and suspends for two years all legislation that might prevent these transactions.
The transactions are going to take place under the supervision of a seven-man team, comprised of Vice President Mohammad Mokhber, Economy Minister Ehsan Khandouzi, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi, Roads Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash, Planning and Budget Chief Massoud Mirkazemi, Parliament Speaker’s representative Pejman Pashmchizadeh and a representative to be appointed by the Judiciary Chief. The members of the taskforce are said to have absolute judicial immunity.
Making a paradoxical remark, Ghalibaf said "Immunity does not mean that the members on this board can commit crimes,” and added that “there will definitely be supervision on this board."
The team is headed by Mokhber, who practically runs the administration and is closely linked with the office of the country’s ruler Ali Khamenei. Since the plan does not specify any supervision mechanism and grants legal immunity, it is not clear who will supervise Mokhber.
Without elaborating on his role in the ratification of the measure, Ghalibaf assigned Pashmchizadeh as his representative on the board on Monday. Early in January, Pashmchizadeh did not manage to garner the needed votes for the Supreme Audit Court of Iran.
Former lawmaker Mohammad Khoshchehreh, an economics professor at Tehran University, criticized the immunity, saying that “influential people can lead the board astray."
Denouncing the plan, Iranian investigative journalist and historian Hossein Dehbashi quipped that the plan can be described as “the distribution of the spoils” of war.
On Sunday, hardliner politician Ahmad Tavakkoli rebuked the plan to liquidate public assets with no supervision or a clear process in a letter addressed to the heads of the three government branches. Himself a regime insider and a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, Tavakkoli noted that the measure is in obvious violation of the country’s constitution. He argued that this manner of running the government is similar to the behavior of a drug addict who cannot afford to buy his drugs and decides to sell off its belongings to support his addiction.
"At the beginning of the addiction, the addict spends his income on buying drugs, but after the income is not enough, he starts selling his properties and furniture,” Tavakokoli did not mince his words.
Many former officials and the media have expressed deep concerns over the plan. Mohammad Reza Salehi, a logistics chief of former President Hassan Rouhani’s office, in a speech at a meeting of former officials earlier this month argued that the so-called privatization would give rise to massive corruption, degenerate the regime from within and eventually cause its collapse.
Reza Gheibi, an economic journalist, told Iran International that the liquidation of assets would not help the government to overcome the economic crisis it is grappling with. “In the best-case scenario, it may balance some of the budget deficit,” he said, adding that transferring these assets to individuals and entities connected with Khamenei’s office, who would be the likely beneficiaries, would give them control over the economy.
In a tweet last Wednesday (February 1), Iran's exiled prince, Reza Pahlavi, accused Khamenei of plundering the country’s national wealth “greedily” with the so-called privatization plan. “Plunderers should be aware that legal immunity will not help them, and the plundered assets of the Iranian nation should [one day] be restored to the treasury of the nation,” he wrote.
The shady privatization plan, which is promulgated to improve generation of wealth and production in Iran, has been met with a lot of skepticism by the public, who have seen corrupt “privatization” in the past 15 years, when state properties were sold at ridiculously low prices to well-connected individuals.
The clerical regime – struggling with domestic unrest and grappling with rising inflation on the backdrop of global isolation – is in desperate need of money. People are terrified that the plan is the Islamic Republic’s last-ditch effort to liquidate public assets to keep itself afloat.
IRGC Brigadier General Jamaleddin Aberumand, who is currently serving as an aide to Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) and was a former deputy commander for IRGC coordination affairs, has appropriated parts of the salaries that the IRGC meant to pay to its militias in countries such as in Syria and Yemen.
Aberoumand was the head of IRGC Bonyad Cooperative, an entity also known as the Cooperative Foundation of the Revolutionary Guard and under US Treasury Department sanctions since December 2010. He was apparently in charge of paying the salaries of IRGC Quds (Qods) Force militias-- a division responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations.
Zainebiyoun Brigade -- recruited mainly from Shia Pakistanis living in Iran – and Fatemiyoun Brigade – recruited from Afghan refugees in Iran and Afghanistan – were formed in 2014 to fight in Syria along with President Bashar al-Assad forces. These forces, along with Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon are some of the forces that are in fact employed and regularly paid by the IRGC.
A senior IRGC commander, who talked to Iran International on condition of anonymity, says the Fatemiyoun, Zainebiyoun and Houthis were paid a monthly salary of $700 in 2018 but the figure has been reduced in recent years. By 2022, the militiamen are paid about $100 to $200 per month. According to this information, Hezbollah fighters receive the highest salaries among the proxy forces, at about $1,300 per month, while the maximum salary of IRGC proxy forces in Syria is $250, and the Yemeni Houthis receive $100 a month.
However, the catch is that although they are paid significantly less than their earlier salaries, Aberoumand – and probably other IRGC commanders working with him – report much higher salary expenses to the government and pocket the difference. The source told Iran International that they overcharge the government to the tune of $500-1000 per month per fighter. The amount lost in the alleged corruption scheme runs into hundreds of millions dollars a year.
According to unconfirmed reports, the Quds force has more than 200,000 forces across the Middle East although the number the IRGC is eager to admit is about half of that. Therefore, to provide the money needed for the salaries of the undeclared forces, the country manipulates the budget figures to make up for the difference.
In early 2022, an audio file of a meeting of IRGC commanders was leaked that revealed that Aberoumand played a key role in a corruption case at Tehran municipality of about 13 trillion rials ($440 million at the exchange rate then), indicating financial irregularities that took place under the watch of Ghalibaf when he was the capital’s mayor from 2005 to 2017. The irregularities may have been a way to provide for the salaries of the Quds forces. Several officials and advisors close to Ghalibaf were arrested over the case but not Aberoumand. In January 2018, a then-City Councilor Majid Farahani disclosed that $5 billion of Tehran’s municipality funds went missing during Ghalibaf’s tenure.
Part of the recording directly implicated Ghalibaf, former Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani, Aberoumand, and then Chief of the IRGC Intelligence Organization Hossein Taeb in covering up the embezzlement of 80 trillion rials (around $3 billion at the time) between Tehran municipality and a firm controlled by the IRGC -- Yas Holding.
In the recording, it is revealed that Ghalibaf suggested the IRGC and Tehran Municipality sign a false contract for the same amount to justify the disappearance of the money. An official is heard saying that Khamenei had ordered 90 percent of the money earned by Yas Holding to be used to finance the Quds Force and the remaining 10 percent to go to the IRGC for its general needs.
To prevent such fiascos in the future, the current administration has come up with a new remedy in the country’s state budget. In the budget bill for the next Iranian year, which starts March 21, the government has granted new permits to some departments such as the General Staff of the Armed Forces and other regime entities to sell oil products on behalf of the government and earn some of the income.
According to the Note 1 of the bill – titled “Oil and its relations with the government” -- the National Iranian Oil Company is obligated to deliver “crude oil and gas condensates” to entities introduced by the executive bodies. As per the new measures, the General Staff of the Armed Forces is given the authority to sell and refine oil up to €4.5 billion. It means that the Armed forces can give crude oil to refineries and receive products that should be exported.