There are seven definitive legal verdicts issued against former President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who is charged with financial violation worth around $3 billion, asserts a former member of the Iranian Parliament.
In a note for Khabaronline, a news website close to the speaker of the parliament Ali Larijani, Fazel Mousavi said he received the report from well-informed sources.
Ahmadinejad and the Larijani brothers have been fighting an intensifying war of words recently.
The amount in question relates to government funds during Ahmadinejad’s presidency.
However, he did not say whether the verdicts were reached at a court of law or when a trial was held. Nor did he elaborate how, after these verdicts, Ahmadinejad -- recently appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as a member of the influential Expediency Discerning Council -- remains free and engaged in a bitter war with the head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani.
Mousavi’s claims seem to be part of the tug of war between Ahmadinejad and his opponents. To what extent the Supreme Leader will protect the former president, is unclear.
“Ahmadinejad would be better to contemplate what he owes [the system] rather than calling for justice,” Mousavi wrote.
Mousavi went on to accuse Ahmadinejad and his associates of rejecting Iran’s judicial system. “The judiciary has legally summoned Ahmadinejad and his companions, and they should be accountable to the judicial system,” he wrote.
Criticizing the system for not stopping Ahmadinejad from allegedly committing billions of dollars’ worth of crime at the time, Mousavi noted, “Alas, now that Ahmadinejad is broke, he will not be able to return the money to the treasury.”
Last month, the Iranian Parliament’s Audit Court announced that Ahmadinejad, in the last 18 months of his presidency, spent 4.6 trillion tomans or approximately $1.3 billion of Iran’s oil income illegally.
The court ordered the former president to repay the money, according to the parliament’s website. The ruling said that during his tenure, Ahmadinejad spent oil revenues without proper transfer from the Oil Ministry to the treasury.
Although the court found Ahmadinejad directly responsible, it has issued no other measures against him.
The Audit Court has limited powers of punishment. It can reduce an official’s pay or at most fire officials from government jobs but is not empowered to issue harsher verdic
