IRGC Intelligence Interrogators Blackmailing Economic Defendants
Behind-the-scenes information indicates that IRGC intelligence interrogators are blackmailing suspects in economic corruption in Iran.
The leaked court cases regarding economic corruption in Iran show that behind the dramatic fight against economic corruption by Ali Khamenei and his agents, a larger corruption is hidden, and this major corruption is the receipt of large bribes of $400,000 to €60,000 by interrogators of the IRGC's Ministry of Intelligence from economic corruptors.
Iran International also revealed exclusive documents on economic corruption in the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence service in a report. The Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful security institution in the Islamic Republic, have become a haven for the biggest corruption scandals. In the leaked documents, “Mohammad Mehdi Badi,” a senior IRGC intelligence interrogator, is one of the interrogators who took more than $600,000 in bribes from economic suspects.
The bribes were taken to change the course of the case or to overlook economic corruption by high-ranking individuals who were accused of economic corruption. Ali Khamenei had said in one of his speeches that one of the strengths of the system was the fight against corruption, but behind the scenes, larger corruption was being carried out by agents of Ali Khamenei and the Raisi administration.
Bribery of economic corruption suspects has been taking place since the launch of cryptocurrency exchanges until the latest corruption scandal of "Chay Dabash". In 1400, "Sina Estavi", the director and founder of the online exchange "Cryptoland", was with someone. The person was supposed to give Sina Estavi a portion of the 6 billion stolen cryptocurrency "Bridge" in exchange for $10,000. That person went to Sina Estavi and paid the money, but at that moment, agents from the Ministry of Intelligence of the Revolutionary Guard arrived and arrested the recipient of the money. He was an interrogator of the Ministry of Intelligence of the Revolutionary Guard "Behnam Hajipour" and intended to take a bribe from Sina Estavi. The judiciary accused Sina Estavi of creating unsupported tokens and fraud. A case with more than 51,000 plaintiffs who had invested in the aforementioned exchange. The large bribes that Hajipour received from economic corruption suspects, including Sina Estavi, amounted to more than 70 billion tomans.
The revelation of Hajipour's bribery exposed other cases in which IRGC agents had taken bribes, and one of them, Mohammad Mehdi Badi, is the record holder for bribe-takers. Rasoul Danialzadeh was one of the biggest economic corruption figures who owed 4 trillion tomans to the banking system. State media released a video announcing his return to Iran after fleeing abroad. It was later revealed that the aforementioned video was nothing more than a hoax and that Danialzadeh had come to Iran of his own free will, as a result of an agreement with the IRGC, to play out the scenario desired by the military institution as the fourth defendant in the case of Akbar Tabari, the former deputy head of the two judiciary heads. It has now been revealed that Danialzadeh had paid a bribe to the senior interrogator of the IRGC's economic intelligence department, Mohammad Mehdi Badi. Mohammad Mehdi Badi received a bribe of 2.5 billion Tomans in dollars from Esmaeil Khalilzadeh, the chairman of the board of directors of Esteghlal Club and owner of the Grand Hotel in Gilan, who was arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence on charges of financial corruption in the Gilan Silk Factory, to solve his case. However, the bribe was divided between Mohammad Badi, Seyyed Majid Tabatabaei, Mohammad Ali Ghoncheh, Majid Jahanparto, and Aria Yegangi, members of the IRGC intelligence interrogators.
The aforementioned individuals are just a small number of victims of the Ministry of Intelligence agents who, by paying bribes, were cleared of economic charges and returned to normal life or emigrated abroad. In fact, one end of economic corruption is connected to the agents of the regime and the most security institution of the regime, which is the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
