Iran: How hard earned U.S. dollars are smuggled out of the country

Iran: How hard-earned U.S. dollars are 

smuggled out of the country

More money is being smuggled outside of Iran

Analysis by PMOI/MEK

Iran, July 31, 2019 - In May, Hossein Mirshojaeean, former deputy minister of economy in Iran, said that about $30 billion of the total $40 billion that Iran made through exports has never returned to Iran, neither as imported goods nor as money.

More recently, according to Eghtesad Online, an Iranian website specializing in economic news, Iran’s director of the Central Bank reported that about $18.5 billion from last year’s $40 billion in exports have returned to Iran.

While even taking the comments of Iran’s Central Bank director into account leaves out the fate of 11.5 billion dollars, other governmental statistics suggest that more than 70 percent of the earned money through exports never returns to Iran.

No need to say that the major problem here is the very same governmental institutions that function with impunity under the protection of various political factions.

According to Iranian “Gostaresh News” website, deputy chair of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce with China said, “More than 70 percent of [Iran’s] exports are carried out by state-run companies… Weak management leads to problems, such as the money that is earned through exports fails to return to the country.”

However, since all institutions and branches of the Iranian regime are part of the same corrupt system, no one points a finger at a specific company or institution. And it isn’t only about exports earnings.

Tasnim news agency, close to the terrorist-designated Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), quotes the director of Iran’s national tax administration saying, “According to estimates by the tax administration, there have been 400 trillion rials [about $4 billion] of tax evasion in Iran.”

In an interview with Tejarat, an Iranian newspaper specializing in trading, Jamshid Pejvian, an Iranian economist, says that the richest people in Iran “can evade taxation and there are no grounds for their violation of the law to be discovered.”

Farhad Dejpasand, Iran’s minister of economic affairs and finance, claims that only seven percent of the government’s income in Iran comes from taxation, while tax income accounts for 20 and 50 percent of the budget of Turkey and countries in the Scandinavian region respectively.

Meanwhile, a huge portion of Iran’s budget is funneled to institutions that do not undergo any kind of supervision.

According to analysts, the majority of these unsupervised but well-financed institutions are so-called cultural organizations belonging to Iranian regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

“Huge sums have been appropriated to some cultural institutions which are usually beyond governmental supervision and they haven’t been supervised at all, and are not even audited. The budget oversight organization does not report about these institutions so that everybody knows how the appropriated budgets are spent,” says Gholam Ali Jafarzadeh Emenabadi, a member of Iran’s Majlis (parliament).

Some of the institutions that belong to Khamenei and are exempt from taxation are as follows:

1- Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, which has 62 subsidiaries

2- Islamic Development Organization, with its seven subsidiaries

3- The Office of Islamic Development in Qom’s Seminary

4- The Islamic Revolution’s Housing Foundation, with its ten companies and holdings

5- Mostazafan Foundation, with 28 companies in its list of subsidiaries

6- Execution of Imam Khomeini's Order committee, also known as SETAD, with its 63 companies

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