Iran is currently undergoing its worst economic period at the hands of the Iranian regime. The cause is widely considered to be a result of the corruption that is rife throughout the clerical dictatorship.
The state-controlled mafia controls the country’s imports and exports. One of these mafias is the gold mafia.
According to the Jahan-e Sanat daily, people working in the Jewelry field are aware of ‘the presence of an invisible mafia network’ but are reluctant to expose it for fear of losing their businesses.
They published a statement from the Chairman of the Cooperative Board of the Jewelry Guild, who said, “Unfortunately, the well-known groups have formed triangles in the Jewelry Guild that are in harmony with each other, and if an activist in this field does not coordinate with them or does not act according to their system, they hinder their work.”
Jahan-e Sanat explained that Iran has its own gold reserves, and its gold industry ‘is a long-standing art among its people’. However, the regime would rather import gold from other countries.
Iran was one of the world’s largest gold exporters. The organized mafia, connected to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), has practically stopped gold export and is importing gold on a large scale.
As a result of the regime importing gold, around 2,000 domestic jewelry factories in Iran have been forced to close. At the same time, the Iranian economy is freefalling at a considerable rate. In order to compensate for the budget deficit, the regime decided to start desperately printing banknotes which have caused subsequently caused inflation.
Globally, the Iranian currency currently has the lowest value due to the regime’s corruption and other malign activities. However, due to the declining value of the Rial and the levels of inflation, the prices of gold have risen due to the large quantities of gold being bought by investors. This has led to the IRGC, among other institutions owned by the regime, importing considerable amounts of gold to fund their activities.
As the value of imports and exports is linked to the value of a country’s currency, if there are more imports than exports, currency value goes into a decline, and vice-versa, more exports than imports boost the value. Regardless of this, the regime still continues to import gold from abroad.
A country’s demand for gold to meet the needs of government, consumers, investors, and industry can only be determined by offsetting gold imports by exporting gold.
In their publication, Jahan-e Sanat said, “The silent embezzlement of gold results in the unemployment of thousands of workers and their families. In the last one or two years, 1,800 workshops in this field have been closed, and no one has been held accountable.”
There is no surprise that like many other national resources in Iran, the IRGC heavily dominates the gold and jewelry industry. The regime has more than enough means to support Iranian citizens who are suffering from the economic pressures that the former has caused, but rather than rectify the problem, they would rather make pursuing malign activities their priority.
The state-controlled mafia is controlling people’s lives. As long as the regime stays in power, these mafias continue devouring Iran’s national wealth and ruing Iranians’ lives.
