Parliament Speaker agrees to continue investigation into municipality

Despite the judicial review of the municipality's violations, the parliamentary investigation into the case will continue. Some members of the Civil Engineering Commission had stated that continuing the investigation would violate parliamentary regulations.

On Tuesday evening, November 15, Mahmoud Sadeghi, Ahmad Mazeni, and Alireza Rahimi, three representatives who are signatories to the plan to investigate the municipality, met and discussed with the Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Ali Larijani.

A number of members of the Parliament's Civil Engineering Commission had said in recent days that, given the judiciary's investigation into possible violations in the transfer of municipal properties, continuing to investigate and investigate representatives would violate internal regulations.

Sadeghi told ILNA news agency about the meeting: "After listening to the explanations, Mr. Larijani was very surprised at the issues raised by opponents of the investigation into the Tehran Municipality in today's meeting and emphasized that conducting this investigation does not conflict with the investigation of the astronomical real estate case in the judiciary."

Three axes of investigation

A member of the Omid faction's board of directors says that with Larijani's remarks today, the plan to investigate the municipality will be put on the agenda at the first meeting of the Civil Affairs Commission, and all news that has been published about its cancellation is denied.

This plan has been prepared in three axes, the first of which is related to "the acquisition and transfer of real estate, including land and housing, by the Tehran Municipality to legal and natural persons, which also includes the issue of transferring real estate to some members of the city council."

Sadeghi told ILNA News Agency on November 29: "Participatory projects of Tehran Municipality with natural and legal persons are another focus of the investigation plan, and the third focus of this plan is related to agreements made by Tehran Municipality with natural and legal persons arising from changes in land use."

Promise of legal action

According to Tasnim News Agency, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said in his November 13 press conference that the judicial system would handle the municipal property case "without any leniency and based on legal criteria."

The Judiciary Spokesperson said: "The Tehran Prosecutor's Office is waiting to receive the documents from the General Inspection Organization of the country, and after that, naturally, the cases where a crime has been committed will be handled without any leniency and with the utmost care and speed."

Ahmad Tavakoli, a former member of parliament and director of the Transparency and Justice NGO, explained in a press conference on November 8 the results of the organization's investigation into the municipal property case, based on which "the municipality's violation is proven."

In September of this year, a letter signed by the Inspector General of the National Inspection Organization based in Tehran Municipality was published in cyberspace, in which the names of 180 people, including a number of municipal managers and city council members, were published in connection with the transfer of municipal properties.

According to Tavakoli: "From the published list of 180 people, what was confirmed to the watchdog is 108 transfers, during which 110 properties were transferred to 122 people. The reason for the difference in figures is that in some cases, two properties were transferred in one transfer, or one property was transferred to several people."

According to this report, the total financial value of the properties transferred exceeded 82 billion Tomans and the amount of discounts given to individuals exceeded 24 billion Tomans.

Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says that all transfers and discounts have been made in accordance with the law, and in some cases, municipal assistance has included cooperatives that do not belong to this group.

The mayor of Tehran says that one of these cases involved a cooperative of the judiciary, whose “problems were resolved with the help of the municipality.” This case still has many ambiguities that the parliamentary investigation is supposed to clarify.

Source: DW