This is a picture of a flower.
Mehdi Dehghan

These days, the senior leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran consider the two malignant tumors of “corruption and rent-seeking” as threats and factors of the collapse of the system, which are also the main cause of it and are revealed in some form every day. Currently, the depth of the disaster is such that even the supervisory and judicial institutions have been melted down in this problem; to the point that cases of embezzlement, corruption and rent-seeking should not be too widespread. Now, land-grabbing, apartment-grabbing, mountain-grabbing, oil and oil tanker-grabbing, rig-grabbing, forest-grabbing, mine-grabbing, and sea-grabbing are examples of rent-seeking and corruption, a significant portion of which occurs in various institutions, including municipalities, city councils, and the Martyrs Foundation. Currently, a table called the Revolution has spread throughout the country of Iran, in which only a select few have a share.

Due to the widespread corruption, embezzlement and fraud in the country, the only issue that has not yet been exposed is “sky-high embezzlement”. In the future, investigations into sky-high embezzlement may also be added to the long list of investigations, such as investigations into the Social Security Organization, IMIDRO, insurance industry, automotive industry, etc. In the end, a journalist may be punished and imprisoned in this process, or the embezzler may only be fined 200,000 tomans in cash, or perhaps the investigation team may give up halfway and refrain from pursuing the matter. Recently, First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri has said that some people openly commit bullying and this type of behavior is a new phenomenon in itself.

One of the most corrupt and embezzlement-prone centers is the Tehran Municipality, which is currently under investigation in Parliament due to the illegal sale of Tehran’s lands and the lavish gifts given to officials during the holiday season. In this case, only one journalist named Yashar Soltani has been imprisoned for exposing these violations and directly filing a complaint against Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Mayor of Tehran and the Chairman of the City Council. According to Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the Tehran prosecutor, this journalist has now been released after completing the investigation and posting bail. Ghalibaf considers the accusations of giving thousands of square meters of land to his wife at a very low price and giving special and golden discounts to some managers and members of the City Council as baseless and untrue.

If Sardar Ghalehbagh, the current mayor of Tehran, had become the president in 2013 instead of Rouhani, perhaps now instead of accusations of land grabbing in Tehran, there would be discussions of land grabbing throughout Iran. The share of embezzlements from the national treasury would be equivalent to that of a province, region, or even a large or small village, and instead of headlines about Tehran, the media would be using the term “Iran grabbing”. Of course, these days the media has reported that Ghalehbagh’s condition for participating in the upcoming elections is the support of the fundamentalists.

The duel of representatives of the parliament over the investigation and examination of the Tehran municipality.

Currently, the investigation and examination of the Tehran municipality by the parliament has become the subject of media attention. Some members of the parliament are now demanding a thorough investigation of the violations that have taken place in the Tehran municipality, while others are trying to dismiss the issue of the parliament’s investigation and examination of the Tehran municipality. Recently, Mehdi Afzari, a member of the parliament’s Civil Commission, announced in an interview with Mehr News Agency that the parliament’s investigation and examination of the Tehran municipality has been dismissed due to a violation of internal regulations. Afzari also mentioned that during the commission’s meeting to discuss the investigation and examination of the Tehran municipality, the mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, was present and thanked the parliament for looking into the matter. According to the internal regulations of the parliament, it is not possible to investigate and examine cases that are currently under review by the judicial system, which is why the investigation and examination of the Tehran municipality has been

This is while Mustafa Kavakbian, a member of the Hope Faction’s leadership in parliament, emphasized in a verbal warning during the open session of parliament: “The parliament’s leadership must definitely warn the Construction Commission when a matter is referred to them by the leadership, that this commission does not have the right to prevent the investigation and examination of the Tehran municipality.”

He also mentioned the meeting of the Civil Commission with the presence of Ghalibaf, which was held to investigate and examine the Tehran Municipality, and reminded that the Commission did not allow applicants to discuss and argue because a legal case had been formed, and the parliament has no right to investigate and examine. This representative of the parliament continued: “It is very strange that on the same night that Ghandali, the head of the Cultural Reserve Fund, was arrested, the parliament approved the investigation and examination of this fund. How is it that this commission acts differently regarding the case of examining the Tehran Municipality?”

Also, Mohammad Reza Badamchi, another representative of the parliament, has another account of the dimensions of corruption in Tehran Municipality and City Council. Referring to the discovery of new cases of corruption by parliament representatives, he stated: “There are one or two cases in this regard that the parliament has entered and representatives have not been satisfied with the explanations given, and soon a new and major voice of corruption will be heard.” A member of the Hope faction, regarding the role of the media in the fight against corruption, said: “When the media act independently, it is certainly accompanied by transparency. When transparency prevails, the only support for it is the media. Therefore, the role of the media can be very fundamental; because if they were not involved, the issues that have been raised in the past two or three years would not have been highlighted to this extent. Also, regarding the investigation and examination of astronomical properties, it must be said that the explanations provided by the municipality

Corruption and nepotism revolution

In general, the municipality of Tehran is a prime example of the source of corruption and embezzlement in the heart of the country. With the arrival of the Ahmadinejad government, which was supposed to be the cleanest government, we witnessed the revolution of corruption and embezzlement, and this situation continues in the Rouhani government. According to economic experts, with the arrival of the new government, the only new thing that happens is that the embezzlers of the new government switch places with the previous government. For example, in the case of astronomical salaries and the granting of rent-seeking loans, the names of senior managers in the Rouhani government, including Safdar Hosseini, the head of the National Development Fund, were seen, which led to the resignation of many managers.

Unfortunately, these days there are people who claim to fight against corruption, but they themselves benefit from it. Even the footprint of the judiciary and members of parliament can be seen in this matter, and sometimes government officials expose each other. Social and economic experts have always warned about the systemization of corruption in Iran and see it as the main cause of the collapse of the Islamic Republic. Farshad Momeni, a member of the faculty at Allameh Tabatabai University, has always emphasized that the cost of corruption in the country must increase.

According to this economic expert, the institutional structure of incentives for rent-seeking, corruption, and profiteering must be replaced with an institutional structure that incentivizes knowledge, efficiency, and productivity. In this path, at the highest level, three serious activities must be included in the agenda of policy-making. First, increasing the opportunity cost of rent-seeking. Iran is currently in the most disastrous situation in this regard, meaning that producers are dominated by non-producers and trade in money and real estate has become a profit-driven engine of value creation. The complementary pillar of this issue is the design and development of a national program to combat corruption based on prevention.

According to Momeni, the current approach in fighting corruption in Iran is to allow institutional structures to exist and passively intend to deal with it, which is both costly and ineffective. The final component of this program is to design and develop a supportive program for national production. In the current institutional structure, rent-seeking allocations are used as a means of distributing rent, rather than promoting productive infrastructure. However, in strategic development plans, the line between real producers and rent-seekers is clearly defined.

Hossein Raghefar, another economic expert, believes that the existence of a powerful and wealthy network in various sectors of the country has created a nest and directs economic policies towards its own interests, hindering the optimal distribution of resources for the development of the country. Neglecting the intervention of power in the allocation of the country’s economic resources, which in previous years has spent resources for its own benefit and has only been studied for the past 8 years.

According to this economic expert, neglecting administrative organizations and the corruption prevalent within them makes it impossible to present any effective solution for reform; because without fixing the existing structures, there is no reason or justification for the next income that the country receives to be spent on undeveloped projects and not towards the country’s development and growth. Additionally, the signs that this economy gives to its actors is to invest their resources in safe places such as buying and selling land. This is why land transactions in Iran have a historical and traditional background that attracts large resources. Therefore, the Iranian economy does not produce and, in a sense, the overall economy is at zero.

Media’s fear of exposing corruptions

Self-censorship and anxiety have become a unwritten law in Iranian media, where failure to comply with it will result in being shut down. A recent example of this was the filtering of a website exposing corruption and misconduct within the Tehran municipality and city council, which received significant support from the judiciary. The website was quickly filtered and the corresponding journalist was arrested, but the investigation into the billion-dollar corruption case of the municipality and city council is moving at a snail’s pace. On the other hand, the parliamentary investigation into the matter was suddenly halted.

The media have mentioned Ahmad Hakimipour, a member of the reformist City Council, as the person who provided the “confidential document” to Yashar Soltani, leading to the arrest of this journalist. Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the public and revolutionary prosecutor of Tehran, has announced the arrest of Yashar Soltani, stating that this journalist has published the confidential document of the Inspection Organization with malicious intent and the fact that the document is not stamped as confidential is not a reason for it not being confidential. This is while recently, the journalist who published the insulting remarks of MP Qazi Pour against women has also been sentenced to imprisonment.

A review of the results of the judicial investigations into the violations of the Tehran Municipality.

Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the Attorney General of Iran, announced in a special interview on the second channel of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting about the case of transferring properties of Tehran Municipality. He stated that Ghalibaf was not involved in the incident and was unaware of it, and investigations showed that there were no legal issues in the process and no violations were committed. However, the contracts of 45 people were invalid and had to be terminated. Additionally, 150 people who received land were members of the Tehran Municipality cooperative, but the discounts they received were not legitimate and must be returned. 29 people outside the municipality also received apartments through letters of introduction, which are also invalid and must be terminated. Some others also received properties directly outside the cooperative, which should not have been done.

Furthermore, Mojtaba Mohseni Ejei, the spokesperson for the judiciary and the first deputy of this institution, said in the 104th press conference about the case of transferring astronomical properties: “After the arrival of the country’s inspector general and the report not being conclusive, the issue was publicized by some individuals who claimed that publishing confidential documents is a crime. Some say if someone exposes corruption, why are they being punished? No, exposing corruption is not being punished, it is the publication of confidential documents that is being punished, which is a secondary issue. However, the issue of the municipality is being pursued and has not been stopped. Because some secondary issues were raised, the country’s prosecutor general followed up on the matter and reported it. The report was referred to the Tehran prosecutor’s office and this office is currently investigating the documents and evidence of the country’s inspector general. Investigations have been carried out by the city council, the mayor of Tehran, and some related individuals

In general, the lengthening of the process of dealing with violations by the Tehran municipality and members of the city council, as well as the behind-the-scenes deals to stop investigations and inquiries, leads to this case being archived like other violations and the public becoming aware of yet another corrupt subject and story. Unfortunately, this process and procedure has been repeating in Iran for several decades.

Explanation:

This article has been written using the news agencies of Mehr and ISNA, as well as the newspaper Shargh.