Top Presidential Advisor Akbar Torkan on Sunday threatened to expose politicians who plan to use ill-gotten wealth in their election campaign in the next Iranian year.
The upcoming Iranian year (starting March 21), the government will reveal the names of many who try to gain political jobs through illegitimate funds, the advisor said, referring to the next parliamentary elections to be held in early 2016.
“Next year is the year of closure on those who use dirty money in politics,” Torkan told Neday-e Iranian news agency. “We won’t let them win in elections and will expose them whenever necessary.”
Interior Minister Abdoreza Rahmani-Fazli said in a conference on illegal drugs in Tehran on Feb. 21 that money made by drug trafficking “enters the political scene and is spent in the form of election campaign funds.”
Rahmani-Fazli said that “a great part of moral corruption in the country has to do with the introduction of dirty money in politics.”
Economic corruption ran rampant during the reign of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with many becoming millionaires and billionaires overnight. “They capitalized on the opportunities that the government provided them,” Torkan said.
“Ahmadinejad was not a person, nor a government, but rather a well-planned intellectual, political, and economic group,” Torkan asserted, IRNA news agency reported Mar. 8. “Now that group is avoiding association with him.”
“They will not be able to claim they are clean or deny their role in misdeeds even if they baptize ten times.”
It is not right for us to remain silent in the face of those who plan to use money from illicit activities for their election campaigns, Torkan added, “even as we speak, dirty money has corrupted parts of Iran’s management system.”
“They want to rebrand themselves with new names and slogans, but they cannot wash their hands of the filth.”
When asked if the government will suffer in the elections if it doesn’t deliver on its promises, Torkan replied: “Those whose hands used to be in the government’s pockets are the ones standing in the way of progress, and whenever we uncover one of their corruption nests, they cry foul!”
“Don’t they know that the government knows them and can expose them if it wants to?”
Reporters contended that certain figures claim that current economic conditions are due to the economic cycle and not the government’s doing. Torkan replied by saying that if it wasn’t for the government, the economy wouldn’t be growing. “Why didn’t these people speak up when the economy was shrinking?” he asked.
