MARKET MOVER: Khamenei's image and stock-price displays at the Tehran Stock Exchange in 2010. Setad now owns stakes in companies worth billions of dollars. REUTERS/Stringer
Khamenei’s Conglomerate Thrived As Sanctions Squeezed Iran -- Babak Dehghanpisheh and Steve Stecklow, Reuters
Part 2: An organization controlled by Iran’s supreme leader generates billions of dollars a year, helping to solidify his control over a country hobbled by sanctions.
Seven years ago, the United Nations and Western powers began subjecting Tehran to steadily harsher economic sanctions. Around the same time, an organization controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei started to study how some developing economies managed to grow fast.
Setad, as the organization is known, had amassed billions of dollars in property seized from Iranian citizens. What Iran lacked and needed, Setad decided, was conglomerates on a par with those of South Korea, Japan, Brazil and the United States.
According to an account this year by a senior official in the unit that oversees Setad's financial investments, Ali Ashraf Afkhami, the organization also picked the perfect candidate to create an Iranian national champion: Setad itself.
Read more ....
Previous Post: Is Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei The 'Richest Man' In The World?
My Comment: These stories from Reuters are very damaging to the "pious" reputation of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It will not surprise me if the Iranian government (in the months to come) will find some excuse to reintroduce a ban on Reuters.
No comments:
Post a Comment