Khamenei begs for donations despite his wealth

Islam Mohamed

Despite all of the economic turmoil caused by the spread of the coronavirus in Iran, the mullah regime has not opened its coffers to feed the country’s poor. The Iranian regime has taken advantage of COVID-19 pandemic to increase its wealth.  Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei launched on Friday a new section for donations on his website for supporting the patients of COVID-19 virus.

The coronavirus is spreading fast across Iranian governorates. An Iranian Health Ministry spokesperson told official television that the death toll from COVID-19 reached 5,031 people until April 18 and the infected cases totaled 80,868.

Khamenei owns big financial institutions of budgets exceeding billions of dollars.

In 2019, the US embassy in Iraq estimated Khamenei’s wealth at $200 billion as he owns big financial institutions worth billions of dollars.

Khamenei owns institutions that run industrial, financial and commercial activities. Khamenei also runs financial, real estate, oil, and communications businesses.

President Hassan Rouhani said those close to Khamenei were corrupt after the Financial Control Authority issued a report claiming some 4.8 billion was taken out from the state budget by government officials.

Rouhani said in a televised speech that there’s no financial supervision over revolutionary, judicial and military organizations.

Public complaints increased over the past two months due to lack of medical supplies in hospitals and weak allocations to face the pandemic, despite the allocation of 1 billion euros from the National Development Fund.

Khamenei approved the allocations at the request of President Rouhani early this month.

It is not clear yet how these allocations were spent. Two years ago, a total of $20 billion were allocated to import unnecessary goods despite the country’s economic turmoil and high unemployment rate.