Appeal court upholds convistion of ex-CBI officials

The Supreme Court of Iran announced last year that the request for trail of Valliollah Seif, the Governor of the Central Bank and Ahmad Araghchi, the then newly appointed Deputy Governor of the Central Bank who were found guilty of some violations, was accepted in the first branch of the Supreme Court and the case was sent to an pararrel counrt. After this case was referred to the that branch, the contents of the case were examined again in seven court hearings.

The first branch of the Tehran Revolutionary Court which specialized in dealing with the crimes relating to disrupting in the economic system of the country, after hearing the statements of the prosecutor's representative, the defendants and their lawyers and examining the contents and documents related to the case, found the actions done by Mr. Wali Elah Saif, Ahmad Araghchi and Salar Aghakhaniin in relation to their intervention in the unofficial foreign currency market or the free market as the crime of foreign currency smuggling and issued a verdict to convict those individuals.

In the case of Salar Agha Khani accused of paying bribes and the accusations against Seyyed Rasul Sajjad, the then directors of the international affairs of the Central Bank and Maysam Khodaei, who borth were accused of accepting bribes and whose appeals were rejected, the previous verdict issued by the lower court was upheld by the appeal court.

According to the verdict, those defendants were sentenced to pay amount of fines equal to twice the value of the currency they smuggled in Iranian local currency, the rial.

The defendentance have also been sentenced to different jail terms.

Beginning in the middle of the Iranian year of 1396(March 21, 2017-2018), when the foreign currency market fluctuations got momentum, Ahmad Araghchi, in coordination with Valliollah Seif, decided to manage the rising prices in the foreign currency market through injecting foreign currencies in the form of cash into the market instead of taking specialized and scientific measures in a bid to curb the volatile market.

During the implementation of the decision to inject cash into the market, a lot of wrongdoings and illegal actions took place by the CBI officials which triggered filing a legal case against them by the Judiciary.

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