The Islamic Republic Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's June 27 remarks defending the reputation of the former head of the Judiciary seem to have had an immediate impact on important corruption trials.
Khamenei had strongly supported the former Chief-Justice Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani, praising him as a "virtuous" personality, far from financial corruption.
Ali Khamenei went even further, calling his protege "the initiator" of the anti-corruption campaign "within" and "beyond" Iran's Judiciary.
A day later, the charge against a well-connected businessman, Abbas Iravani, changed from "corruption on Earth" to "disrupting the country's economic system”. Based on the Islamic penal code, "corruption on Earth" is punishable by the death penalty. He is implicated in a corruption trial related to the auto industry.
In another case labeled as the "bribery gang" or Akbar Tabari's trial, the court focused on several cases regarding the transfer of several luxury apartments in the north of Tehran. The apartments, located at the posh Roma Towers, were given away as bribes, the court was told on Sunday.
One of the defendants, Rasoul Danialzadeh, insisted that he had done “nothing bad," in his whole life, and never bribed the prime suspect, Akbar Tabari, the former deputy to the Chief-Justice in executive affairs.
Judicial officials in the Islamic Republic refer to Rasoul Danielzadeh as a "Super Debtor" to the banks.
Furthermore, the name of the former head of the Judiciary was not even mentioned in Sunday’s hearing.
Besides his connections to the former Judiciary deputy's case, Danialzadeh has already been convicted in a financial corruption case related to the Islamic Republic President Hassan Rouhani's brother.
Rouhani's brother, Hossein Fereydoun, 63, was responsible for Ayatollah Khomeini's security in the first few years after the revolution.
Described as his older brother's "eyes and ears" in the negotiations leading up to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Hossein Fereydoun was arrested July 15, 2017. He was released two days later and reportedly paid as much as 500 billion rials bail (about $15.3 million at the time) for his release.
