Seyed Mohammad Hashemi: Husband and Partner in Corruption
Former Vice President for Womens and Family Affairs, Masoumeh Ebtekar, is well known to Iranians–first for her role in the 1979 hostage crisis, then in politics, and finally in cases of high-profile abuses of power. Perhaps less well known, but just as implicated in her corruption, is Ebtekar’s husband Seyed Mohammad Hashemi.
Seyed Mohammad Hashemi was an Iranian intelligence officer during the time of the Iran Hostage Crisis, later becoming head of Foreign Intelligence at the Ministry of Information. Hashemi then used this influence to propel a career in business, namely the opaque world of commodities import/export. In the late 1980s, early in his business career, Hashemi received a government project worth around 2.3 billion USD to research oil exploration in the Persian Gulf, despite having no experience in the oil industry.
Fraudulent reports revealed that no actual work was done on the project, as Hashemi and Ebtekar spent nearly half of this extravagant income on themselves and their businesses. Then, in approximately 1990, Hashemi’s company, Arinshed, received a contract for around 5 million USD from the Tehran governorate to import 4,000 cubic meters of Russian wood. However, after half the money was paid in advance, Hashemi only delivered 500 cubic meters of wood during the project. It is suspected he used the rest of this money as personal income.
More recently, Hashmi has become involved in Iran’s defense industry. In January 2016, U.S. sanctions were placed on Hashemi due to the extent of his relations with the Ministry of Defense for Armed Forces Logistics. Sources allege that Hashemi’s defense company was once active in the supply of rocket technology to North Korea.
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