By Pishtaz | 2023-10-04

Two of the sons of a senior member of the Iranian judiciary are in prison on money laundering and corruption charges, multiple Iranian media outlets reported October 2.

The two men are the sons of judiciary official and Shia cleric Mohammad Mosaddegh Kahnamoui ("Mosaddegh"), the first deputy of judiciary chief and cleric Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei.

Though their arrests were part of an investigation that has been going on for at least eight months, the news has only just come out -- and may have gone unreported altogether had there not been a leak, outlets said.

While several Telegram channels posted the news over the past few weeks, the judiciary did not confirm the arrests and imprisonment until October 1.

The first outlet to report the official confirmation was Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) affiliate Tasnim, quoting judiciary spokesman Masoud Setayeshi.

Mosaddegh's sons are among eight individuals arrested in a corruption case whose suspects are accused of money laundering and corruption to the tune of 200 trillion IRR (roughly $400 million).

The sons were reportedly arrested eight months ago, at the start of the investigation.

Judiciary and IRGC intelligence departments jointly carried out the arrests, and the case is being investigated by both, per Mohseni-Ejei's order, Tasnim said.

Riddled with wrongdoing

Conservative and hardline Iranian media outlets have pointed to the arrest and imprisonment of Mosaddegh's sons as "a sign that justice is being fully served in Iran," and that "no one is above the law."

Regime officials and regime-affiliated media outlets typically claim the Islamic Republic is transparent in its actions and is not swayed by individuals' positions.

The corruption case in which Mosaddegh's sons have been implicated and the related arrests have been kept under wraps for months, however, observers noted, and might not have been acknowledged if the news had not been leaked.

Despite clear evidence of wrongdoing in past cases, a number of senior Islamic Republic officials have not been charged or incarcerated for their actions.

But this protection has not always extended to the relatives of top regime officials, when reports of their misdeeds become too widespread to be ignored.

In March 2020, a Tehran court sentenced Ammar Salehi, the only son of former Chief Commander of the Iranian Army Ataollah Salehi, to 10 years in jail for corruption, and banned him for life from serving in Iran's public sector.

He was charged with receiving more than $26 million in the form of an "illegal loan" from Bank Sarmayeh, and with "disrupting the economic order."

The prosecutor said the younger Salehi had also used Bank Sarmayeh facilities to buy a luxurious property in Tehran and a $154,375 Mercedes Benz.

In November 2019, Iranian media reported the arrest, on corruption charges, of the son of former Roads and Urban Development Minister Abbas Akhundi -- who had previously sought office as Tehran mayor -- and an adviser to the minister.

Mehdi Akhundi, the minister's son, and Shahram Ejtehadi, an adviser related to another senior official, were arrested for taking bribes from contractors to secure deals with the ministry.

Double standards

When Iranian reporters and media outlets have exposed public sector corruption or wrongdoing in the past, they often have faced arrest or closure.

Among them are two female journalists, Elaheh Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi, who were detained for covering the news of the death in "morality police" custody of Mahsa Amini and remain in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.

Iran's prisons have a well-documented track record of human rights violations. But observers say that in the rare cases when the family members or relatives of top officials do go to prison, they receive preferential treatment.

The prison cells, meals, access to the outside world and furlough offered to these individuals make their incarceration easier to endure, according to many unofficial reports.

Regime officials themselves have been re-appointed and, in some cases, even promoted after their corrupt actions have come to light.

One such case is that of Majles (parliament) Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, a former IRGC general who served as Tehran mayor between 2005 and 2017.

In September 2016, the Iranian newspaper Shargh and other media outlets reported that Ghalibaf had arranged for the discounted sale of some 100,000 square meers of municipal land to a select group of city council members.

The plots were reportedly sold at a 50% discount.

In the same year, the now-defunct independent Iranian architecture website Memari News gained access to and published a classified report prepared by the General Inspection Office regarding Ghalibaf's corruption.

The report pointed to "the illegal nature of vesting and selling Tehran municipality's residential, commercial or public use property."

But instead of Ghalibaf, the website's managing editor, Yashar Soltani, was detained on charges of publishing a classified report.

Ghalibaf hired some 13,000 people on the eve of the 2017 presidential elections for administrative work -- a move widely considered unnecessary and unjustified -- that cost the Tehran municipality hundreds of billions of rials.

'Rotten salt'

In 2022, Ghalibaf again made headlines, this time for his family's lavish trip to Türkiye.

His family members brought back 20 large suitcases of items they had purchased, sparking public outrage at a time when many in Iran are suffering greatly from the country's economic crisis.

Also in 2022, a leaked audio file of a secretly recorded conversation between two top IRGC figures revealed major corruption and money laundering at Yas Holding, an IRGC front company established in 2016.

The money laundering was discovered more than two years after it took place. The company was found culpable of misappropriating some 130 trillion IRR, worth roughly $1.8 billion at the time.

Yas Holding had the staunch support of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, and then IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, as well as Ghalibaf -- who was Tehran mayor at the time.

In the words of an old Iranian adage: "Salt stops everything from rotting; tragic is the day that salt rots."

Corruption in the judiciary -- the "salt", for its responsibility for combating crime and ensuring justice -- means that the entire system is now rotten, a tragedy for Iran, observers say.