Jul 5, 2024
The Islamic Republic has lifted the death penalty from the back of billionaire Babak Zanjani and converted it to a 20-year prison sentence. As he has been in jail since 2013, he should be able to go free in nine more years.
In fact, he may go free soon since Iranian law allows a prisoner who has performed well in prison to be freed after completing half of his sentence, which milestone Zanjani reached last year. Zanjani was arrested and charged with defrauding the government out of about $3.5 billion for not giving the government all the funds he gained from selling crude oil internationally.
The government long ago had asked him to use his international companies to market oil in an effort to evade sanctions. Zanjani agreed to do that, but said sanctions had locked up part of the money he earned on the oil sales and prevented him from bringing all the revenues to Tehran. Published figures said he did remit $17 billion to the government.
The Judiciary tried him and sentenced him to death in 2014, but then announced it would consider dropping the death sentence if Zanjani brought the missing oil revenue to Tehran. In February, the Judiciary said Zanjani, now 50, had successfully repatriated everything he owed the government, a total of $3.5 billion.
But it said nothing about the death sentence hanging over his head. Finally, on April 30, the Judiciary announced that, with the approval of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi, the sentence on Zanjani had been commuted to a 20-year prison term. The Judiciary previously said it would consider freeing him if he brought back all the money he owed.
But it didn’t go that far. It isn’t known how much of his business empire remains for Zanjani to return to. Before his arrest, his string of more than 60 business firms was estimated to be worth $14 billion. He operated hotels, a cosmetics firm, a bank, building materials, real estate, an airline and much more.
