Friday, March 21, 2025
The courts have wrapped up the largest corruption case in Iranian history involving $3.37 billion by sending two former cabinet ministers to jail, a first, and sentencing the organizer of the crime to 66 years in prison. The principal behind the crime was businessman Akbar Rahimi-Darabad, the president of Debsh, who was also ordered to repay $2.38 billion to the state treasury. The sentences for his violations of the law totaled 66 years, but Iranian law allows sentences to be served concurrently, so his actual prison time will not exceed the 25-year sentence he received for his major offense. The heart of the crime was that Debsh got to buy foreign exchange at the subsidized rate for food imports.
Debsh said it would import top-of-the-line Indian tea and some machinery for processing the tea. But it actually bought no machinery and much cheaper Kenyan tea. It sold the tea to the public as Indian tea. And it distributed the foreign exchange it did not spend on tea among the members of the crime syndicate.
A total of 61 were charged and the convictions of 44 were announced March 3. The fates of the other 17 have not yet been decided. The two ministers convicted both served in the cabinet of the late President Ebrahim Raisi. They were Agricultural Minister Javad Sadatinejad and Industry Minister Reza Fatemi-Amin.
They signed the papers authorizing Debsh to get the subsidized foreign exchange. Sadatinejad has been sentenced to two years in prison and Fatemi-Amin to one year. The loudest public reaction to the case has been a complaint that the two former ministers were treated too gently. Both were convicted on the charge of “complicity in disrupting the economic order,” a generic crime used in many corruption cases. Of the allotted foreign exchange, 40 percent was not used on any foreign imports, but distributed among the members of the crime syndicate. The case has been a huge embarrassment for conservatives because of the involvement of two Raisi cabinet members.
Those linked to Raisi have argued that the conspiracy to defraud the government started under Raisi’s predecessor as president, Hassan Rohani, a Reformist, who they insist enabled the huge crime by allowing businesses to get subsidized foreign exchange for imports, something that dates back to before Rohani’s presidency. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi has urged the government to search out corruption and prosecute all those involved. But he has insisted that corruption is just a matter of isolated instances and is not systematic within the regime.
