Saeid Mortazavi Won the Gambling Game with Tongue and Time

Sara Kh. – FCN News Agency: The issuance of a court ruling against Saeid Mortazavi, the former Tehran prosecutor and former head of the Social Security Organization, has faced objections from the plaintiffs.

Mina Rokni, a legal expert, told FCN that Mortazavi’s escape from punishment depended on the statute of limitations running out on the cases and judges playing with words.

Rokni emphasizes that judges having free rein to interpret the law differently by shifting one or two words is a process that has been common in Iran for years and prevents justice from reaching those entitled to it.

He further stated in this interview: “Many legal experts have been shocked by the current court ruling in Mortazavi’s cases. Of course, we witnessed last year that the court ruling acquitting Mortazavi in the Kahrizak case also led to protests that yielded no results. Despite the fact that the families of those killed in Kahrizak protested the issuance of this ruling and considered Mortazavi as the main perpetrator of the killing of detainees in Kahrizak during the events following the 2009 elections.

Moreover, contrary to initial rulings issued in connection with the Social Security case based on imprisonment and property forfeiture, the court’s current ruling is now limited to tolerating whipping for this person.”

This legal expert recalled that Iranian news agencies in Mordad of last year and after the court ruling was issued, citing the Social Security Organization’s lawyer, wrote that Mortazavi was sentenced to one year in prison in this case, and he was accused of obtaining unlawful funds and illegally taking charge of the Social Security Organization.

But now Saeid Mortazavi is about to endure only 135 lashes without paying the money claimed by the plaintiffs in the Social Security case.

According to FCN, Tark Hamadani, the lawyer for the plaintiffs in this case and one of the critics of the ruling, emphasizes that the court judge could have considered embezzlement in applying Mortazavi’s actions to the criminal charge and issued a ruling accordingly.

He, who claims to have been shocked by the court’s ruling, reminded Iranian news agencies in an interview that in that case, Mortazavi would also have been convicted of property forfeiture.

Currently, Saeid Mortazavi has been sentenced to 70 and 65 lashes respectively for illegal seizure and negligence in duty.

During his tenure in various positions, Saeid Mortazavi first took action regarding the dissolution of the press court and jury, and subsequently the seizure of a large number of newspapers during Mohammad Khatami’s administration.

He has also faced accusations on the international stage. Being held responsible for the case of the killing of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian journalist and photographer, by the Canadian government is one of these.

Mortazavi was also held responsible after the Kahrizak incident and in addition to the revocation of his judicial immunity in September 2010 by the administrative court, he was suspended from judging. He was then appointed by then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as head of the Central Headquarters for Combating Smuggling of Goods and Currency and then as head of the Social Security Organization.

However, after complaints against him escalated and he was suspended from all government positions, 4 cases were filed against Mortazavi, the first of which concerned his role in torturing protesters of the announced results of the 2009 elections, resulting in a ruling and the acquittal of Mortazavi of complicity in murder.

The investigation into the Social Security Organization, the complaint of Fazal Larijani, and the complaint of Abbas Palizdar’s lawyers were among other criminal cases against Mortazavi.

Who Stole from the Pockets of the Insured

According to FCN, based on the latest official statistics, the Social Security Organization currently has 41 million and 200,000 insured members. Each insured person in this organization pays approximately seven percent of his income to insurance and this amount is in addition to insurance premiums paid by employers, while the organization’s insurance services in the treatment sector are not even responsive to minimums.

Delays in paying debts to diagnostic and treatment centers and even pharmacies are part of the shortcomings that have confronted the Social Security’s service provision to the insured population with challenges even at the minimum.

While the majority of the Social Security insured are workers who make their living with the minimum wage received in the country.

To put it more clearly, the situation is such that an Iranian insured worker with a monthly salary of 800,000 tomans is forced to pay more than seventy percent of his and his family’s medical expenses out of pocket. This is at a time when treatment of a simple illness in our country costs 100,000 tomans.

While this Iranian worker cannot even count the zeros of the monetary embezzlement amounts of Saeid Mortazavi.

For a population of more than 41 million insured members of the Social Security Organization, most of whom live below the poverty line, the idea that someone in the position of CEO of the Social Security Organization easily presented more than two thousand billion tomans to Babak Zanjani by drawing a few checks at ten o’clock at night is nothing but a fairy tale.

But realities have presented another picture of violations in this welfare organization to the people.

The disappearance of a 17 trillion toman check from the Social Security, the sale of a 10,000 square meter land of Tehran Homa Hotel parking to one-tenth of its actual value, the sale of 138 profitable Social Security companies to Babak Zanjani with the position of CEO of Shesta company belonging to Soroosh Qeshm, and the provision of millions of tomans in gift cards to some members of parliament are only part of the measures that took place during Saeid Mortazavi’s tenure at the Social Security Organization.

These very facts indicate that based on Mortazavi’s transaction with Soroosh Qeshm company, Iran Air, Khuzestan Steel, Mobarakeh Steel Isfahan, Bank Saderat, Homa Hotels, Petrochemical Ghadir, Petrochemical Tabriz, National Oil Tanker Company, Paper and Wood of Iran, various insurance companies (Melli, Mihan, Dana, Parsian), Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, various banks including Pasargad, Tat, Parsian, Day, and Shahid Bahonar Copper Industries all fell to Soroosh Qeshm. The legality of this transaction from the perspective of the parties was such that Babak Zanjani in one of his court sessions claimed that the ownership of all 138 companies in the transaction with Mortazavi belongs to him.

In this case, the issuance of a ruling for Saeid Mortazavi has resulted in minimum punishment for him at a time when revelations about his criminal activities in recent years have been significant.

Abbas Palizdar is one of these whistleblowers who accused a group of Islamic Republic officials of widespread financial corruption. Palizdar, in addition to these revelations, also publicized Mortazavi’s reaction to the judge in one of the court sessions. A reaction that led to Mortazavi’s claim to possess accurate documents and evidence of his work reaching the people’s ears. Of course, Mortazavi had announced that he had transferred these documents abroad.

Thus, in the minds of the public there remains no doubt about big figures having a hand in Mortazavi’s violations.

Which was subject to minimum punishment in the court ruling, this mentality was reinforced. To the point that according to Mostafa Tarr Hamadani, the lawyer for a group of Social Security insured members, Mortazavi’s violations are similar to the illegal and major actions of other white-collar criminals whose confrontation requires legal resistance.

Meanwhile, unfortunately we have witnessed that the ruling issued for this violator showed that even the law does not have the power to stand against these people. Or perhaps those documents and evidence removed from the country have created a barrier to the enforcement of the law. A barrier that if broken would victimize many justice seekers and government leaders in Iran.