Corruption in Iran is institutional. One of the main aspects of this issue is the transparency over the sale and ownership of the properties of the regime’s officials which is now for a long time a debate in this regime. This issue was raised in the regime’s Expediency Council, then it was passed over to the tenth parliament and now to the eleventh.
In the tenth parliament, many of the regime’s principlists called for the transparency of the properties of the officials, but suddenly in the eleventh parliament they have changed their minds, and they are now insisting on the secrecy of the officials’ properties, and they are now taking a step further and calling this issue a security issue in the country’s interests.
Following the approval of the Expediency Council years ago, it was noted that the judiciary should consider a system to register the properties of the regime’s officials. The regime decided to implement such a system in the hope of gaining the people’s lost trust, which was the result of four decades of corruption, plunder, and repression.
Nonetheless, the properties of the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the financial empire affiliated with his office were not included.
The system was called, “Executive Regulations of the Law on Investigation of Assets of Officials and Agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and it was approved by the regime’s judiciary in 2019. Until now, this system has not had any outcome. And there is no information about how many of the officials or institutions have registered their properties in this system.
This is while this system has emphasized that officials and institutions who do not cooperate will be charged. Meanwhile, this system speaks about the properties of authorities and has listed 23 titles that include up to the rank of macro-directors in governmental and non-governmental institutions, as well as up to the rank of Brigadier General and heads of police stations and the armed forces.
It also includes a group of members of the Assembly of Experts on Leadership and members of the Expediency Council.
However, like many other worthless rulings related to the regime’s officials and ruling body, there is no real and serious observation about the execution of this law, and it has just an artificial face.
So far, not a single report or news has been published about an official who has been punished for not entering his property information into the system.
The ironic part which is allowing the regime’s officials to circumvent this law is, that this law has pointed that the registration of the officials’ properties must be done by observing security mechanisms, maintaining privacy as well as the accuracy and integrity of the data.
It seems that the officials’ refusal to include information is also because of the alibi of observing confidentiality and the security debate, which will put damage on the regime.
What makes all the commotion around this subject even more worthless is that in 2015 the members of the Expediency Council emphasized that the information of the officials’ properties should not only become public but everyone who made this information public inadvertently or deliberately will be punished and charged.
At the same time, the judiciary spokesperson responded to the question of whether the authorities’ assets were to be communicated transparently to the public or whether they were merely supposed to be in the hands of the judiciary and confidentially. He said: ‘According to the law, the list of officials’ properties is confidential.’
It is obvious that the regime’s fear of being transparent about its officials and their properties is due to its fear of the people’s reaction to their four decades of corruption and plundering the country’s wealth and accumulating it in foreign banks. Therefore, such a thing will never happen in this regime, and its announcement is just to silence the restive people.
