Judiciary Chief Promises Delayed Implementation of Officials’ Asset Review Law

According to the head of the judiciary, the law on reviewing the assets of Iranian Islamic Republic officials and authorities, approved in 2015, will be implemented soon. The basis of this law is one of the constitutional principles that has not been implemented over the past four decades.

The head of the judiciary announced on Monday, May 6, in a joint meeting with senior judicial officials that the executive regulations of the “Law on Reviewing the Assets of Officials, Authorities, and Functionaries of the Islamic Republic of Iran” are being finalized and will be implemented soon.

According to the judiciary’s public relations, Ibrahim Raisi noted in this meeting that the law on reviewing officials’ assets, after being approved by the Islamic Consultative Assembly and examined and confirmed by the Guardian Council and the Expediency Discernment Council of the System, was communicated to the judiciary in 2015 for drafting executive regulations.

The approval of this law in parliament dates back to June 2007. The parliamentary resolution faced objections from the Guardian Council and went back and forth between this body and the legislative apparatus twice, and was referred to the Expediency Council twice in 2011 and 2012.

Raisi did not provide any explanation regarding the delay in implementing this law, which has been about 12 years since its initial approval in parliament and nearly three and a half years since its final confirmation in the Expediency Council.

The head of the judiciary said in Monday’s meeting: “Our goal in implementing this law is not to catch people off guard, but rather we are pursuing transparency and preventive measures. In fact, this law is to protect the reputation of Islamic Republic officials and authorities; in such a way that by developing appropriate mechanisms, oversight of the assets of system functionaries is actually carried out so that officials are not constantly subject to accusations from any person or media outlet, and there is no suspicion regarding their assets.”

Asset Review of Officials with 40-Year Delay

If the basis for reviewing the assets of the Islamic Republic’s functionaries is the implementation of constitutional principles, the delay in this action reaches four decades; reviewing the assets of senior government officials was provided for in the first constitution of the Islamic Republic and, with slight modifications, was also included in its revision in 1989.

Article 142 of the Constitution provides: “The assets of the Leader, the President, the President’s Deputies, Ministers, and their spouses and children before and after service shall be reviewed by the head of the judiciary to ensure they have not increased unlawfully.”

Before the constitutional revision, this article read: “The assets of the Leader or members of the Leadership Council, the President, the Prime Minister, Ministers, and their spouses and children before and after service shall be reviewed by the Supreme Court to ensure they have not increased unlawfully.”

The Guardian Council, in the second phase of reviewing parliament’s resolution, found it inconsistent with Article 110 of the Constitution, which is dedicated to describing “the duties and authorities of the Leader.”

Absence of Review of “Leader’s and His Relatives’ Assets”

Based on available evidence, one of the Guardian Council’s objections to parliament’s resolution was the issue of reviewing the “assets of the Leader” and his spouse and children, which remained ambiguous in the final text of the law.

The law approved by parliament consists of six articles, with the first and third articles contradicting each other; Article 1 explicitly states that “the officials specified in Article 142 of the Constitution” must report the assets of themselves, their spouses, and their children to the head of the judiciary. In other words, this article also includes the Islamic Republic’s Leader and his relatives.

However, Article 3 of the aforementioned law, in which the list of “officials and authorities” obligated to submit reports on their assets is divided into 24 rows, contains no mention of the Islamic Republic’s Leader and his relatives.

Unlawful Delay by the Judiciary

Furthermore, Article 6 of the law on “Reviewing the Assets of Officials…” explicitly states: “The judiciary is obligated to prepare the executive regulations of this law within a maximum period of six months after this law comes into force, and after approval by the head of the judiciary, to announce it.”

This law received final approval in the Expediency Discernment Council on October 30, 2015, and was communicated on December 5 of the same year by the Speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, to the head of the eleventh government, Hassan Rouhani.

Accordingly, the judiciary was “obligated” to prepare and announce the executive regulations of this law by no later than mid-June 2016; a task for which the new head of the judiciary promised to accomplish with approximately three years of delay in the near future. Raisi was appointed as head of the judiciary in March 2019 by the Islamic Republic’s Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

Source: DW