Iran: Parliament To Probe Financial Fraud Case
Iran’s Parliament has summoned the Minister of Economy, Shamseddin Hosseiny, and Finance for questioning on the 3-billion-dollar fraud case involving the Central Bank.
The Mehr News Agency reports that Parliament’s internal policy, finance and economic commissions are behind the summons, which follows a week of intense media coverage of the emerging scandal.
“The public expects to be informed about all the aspects of this fraud and wants the perpetrators to be given the highest level of punishment,” Iranian MP Moosalreza Servati said.
A branch of the Saderat Bank has been identified as the source of the fraud, in which $3 billion in loans and credit was siphoned off over a period of four years.
Iran’s conservative elite has blamed the fraud on the “deviant current,” which is how the establishment describes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s allies. They say the president’s chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, is at the head of this “deviant current,” and he is also accused of having a hand in the embezzlement.
Ahmadinejad has rejected the accusations and described his cabinet and government as the “cleanest government in history.”
The judiciary appointed Iran’s Prosecutor, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, to look into the case, and he has already left for Ahvaz to investigate the Bank of Saderat branch where the fraud is said to have begun.
