Iran’s state television has announced that Muhafarid Amir Khosravi (also known as Amir Mansour Aria) was executed on Saturday. Khosravi who was a billionaire businessman was the main suspect in a $2.6 billion state bank scam. The case is unprecedented in the country, in the amount of money that was involved.
According to the reports, Khosravi was executed at Evin prison, north of Tehran, the country’s capital. The sentence was carried out after Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence, the report added.
But, Khosravi’s lawyer, Gholam Ali Riahi, is saying that he was not informed about his client’s execution, which is usually done by hanging in Iran.
He was quoted as having said, “I had not been informed about the execution of my client. All the assets of my client are at the disposal of the prosecutor’s office.”
Khosravi’s business included 35 companies that ranged from mineral water production to a football club and even one that imported meat from Brazil.
State officials are yet to comment on the lawyer’s claims.
The scam that Khosravi was executed for involved the use of fake documents to get credit from a financial institution, Bank Saderat, in 2007. The money was then used to purchase assets that included state-owned companies like Khuzestan Steel Co., a major steel producer.
Khosravi was among 39 defendants who were brought to court on the corruption charges. Out of them, four received death sentences, two were sentenced to life in prison and the rest were given sentences of up to 25 years behind bars.
The former head of Bank Melli, Mahmoud Reza Khavari, fled to Canada in 2011 after he resigned over the case. He had previously admitted that his bank, also one of the major financial institutions in Iran, was involved in the fraud but that he was not personally involved. He remains on Iran’s wanted list.
The case has raised questions about corruption that existed at the highest levels of the administration of the country’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
