ISNA said the arrests were announced at the seventh session of the ongoing trial of 32 people for a massive bank fraud totaling $2.6 billion.
The seventh trial session brought four accused women into the dock.
ISNA reported that the prosecutor, Mehdi Farahani, announced the arrest of the former deputy economy minister, whom he said was a former head of the Privatization Organization but was identified only by his initials as Gh. R. K. Z.
Gholam-Reza Kord-Zang-aneh took over as head of the Privatization Organization when Ahmadi-nejad became president in 2005 and served until 2009.
It wasn’t indicated whether Kord-Zanganeh gave bribes or accepted them. A great deal of money is involved in the privatization program so it may be that he stands accused of accepting bribes to turn over state business firms at low rates, which was done in the fraud case before the courts.
At the fraud trial, the four women were not named. They were identified as the treasurer, accountant, “supplier” and a secretary for the Amir Mansur Arya Co., which is at the center of the alleged fraud.
The treasurer, showed incriminating documents with her signature, told the court it was common for managers at the firm to sign for one another in order to speed up the work.
The accountant cried during her testimony, pleading, “I ask for a pardon. I did not know about the offenses.”
The supplier, who stands charged with money laundering, denied all the charges and said, “Your honor, after six months working with the company, the newspapers were writing that Mr. Khosravi [the corporate director] was a national hero and job creator. I never dreamed that they were criminals.”
The secretary, charged with forging documents and money laundering, was not in court. Her lawyer said she was ill and could not fly from Kish, a resort island in the Persian Gulf. The defense lawyer said she was just a small employee whose responsibility was to take packages to the airport and pick others up there.
The prosecutor lit into all four women, saying their guilt was “self-evident.” He said, “Of course, Mr. Khosravi has many female employees—50 percent of his staff were women—like in Qaddafi’s regime, because women do not betray their bosses.”