Iranian Tycoon Babak Zanjani Receives Death Sentence

(Photo: Babak Zanjani in court.)

ran’s judiciary announced the initial verdict for Babak Zanjani, tycoon accused of embezzlement of public money today. Zanjani who was assigned by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government with selling Iran’s oil in the global market during the sanction years has been designated as “corruptor on earth”, one of the strongest charges in Iran’s judicial system, and sentenced to death. Two other accused in the case have also received capital punishment.

The news was announced in a press conference today by Judiciary Speaker Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei. Twenty-six sessions of trial under close media scrutiny were held before the sentence was finalized. The vote can be however upturned by the appeal court.

The identity of the two top accomplices to Zanjani was also revealed today: Mahdi Shams, born in 1967, university lecturer in London, PhD in economics, dual Iranian-British national and resident in UK; and Hamid Fallah Heravi, born in 1962, retired, PhD in industrial management, and with no previous criminal records.

Babak Zanjani’s trial was highly publicized, pursued by both the judiciary to prove its earnestness in fighting corruption and by the government to retrieve state-owned oil revenues in possession of Zanjani. The case was also used as an instrument of political pressure by opposite camps against each other. A few days before the parliamentary elections, Kayhan’s front page published two photos of Zanjani receiving awards from both Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rouhani, in response to comment by Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri who had called Zanjani a product of Ahmadinejad’s administration. The high number of comments published in Iranian media just a couple of hours after the news shows the significance of the saga. More details of Babak Zanjani’s case can be found here.