The Minister of Health announced corruption worth 50 trillion tomans in the medical sector; the Ministry of Health denied it.
A member of parliament says that Health Minister Saeed Namaki announced during his Sunday meeting with a number of members of parliament that there was "corruption worth 50 trillion tomans in medicine." However, the Ministry of Health has denied such a statement.
According to Hossein Naqvi Hosseini, a representative from Varamin in the parliament, the Minister of Health said in his Sunday meeting with members of the "provincial representatives' faction" that when he took over the ministry in 2018, "corruption in the field of medicine was painfully prevalent" and in addition to "50 trillion tomans of corruption in medicine," "we don't know where they spent $1 billion in medical equipment."
According to the same report, the Minister of Health also referred to the "powerful corruption mafia in this area" and said that "80 billion tomans were spent on media against the Ministry of Health."
However, an hour after this news was published in Iranian media, Kianoush Jahanpour, head of the Public Relations and Information Center of the Ministry of Health, said: The phrase 50 trillion tomans of corruption in the medical system "was not in the Minister of Health's words at all" and "50 trillion tomans is the entire volume of the medicine and medical equipment market."
However, the Minister of Health reiterated on Twitter that the fate of $1.3 billion in foreign currency for medical equipment is unknown.
Source: Radio Farda
