August 06, 2021
Mir Ali Ashraf Abdollah Pouri-Hosseini, former deputy economy minister and chairman of Iranian Privatization Organization (IPO), has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for “failing to meet the formal requirements of the privatization processes during his time in office.” The 200-page criminal charge sheet issued by the Tehran Criminal Court says a number of privatization deals reached on his watch were handed over to people without following legal procedures and state-owned companies were sold to incompetent or inefficient individuals. Critics have been saying the same for a decade.