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Iran: New Scandal at Tehran’s Stock Exchange Market

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On September 29, the CEO of Tehran’s Stock Exchange Market resigned after it was revealed there were dozens of cryptocurrencies miners discovered in its basement. When it was first reported that there was a mining farm in Tehran’s Stock Exchange Market’s building, the public relations of this organization vehemently denied it.

Yet, in its statement, it said: “Since 2020, due to the migration of liquidity from the stock exchange to cryptocurrencies, and due to the creation of the liquidity outflow crisis, an investigation and research project was launched.”

The state-run Mashreq News reported on September 29 that according to an announcement by the stock exchange organization, “during the supervision of the stock exchange organization, several miners who the stock exchange company exploited were discovered in the building of the aforementioned company. During the investigation, we found that the activity was not fully recorded and disclosed in the reports and by the accounts of the company.”

To cover up this scandal, Ali Sahraei, the CEO of Tehran’s Stock Exchange Market, resigned. “To create an opportunity for further research on the issue of cryptocurrency mining in the Tehran Stock Exchange and to consolidate the capital market, I submitted my resignation to the board of directors of the Tehran Stock Exchange, and the board approved my resignation,” he claimed in a statement.

Iran’s electricity organization, Tavanir, at first denied the existence of miners. Then, after Sahraie’s resignation, Tavanir refused to give any comments about this incident. Meanwhile, it has been reported by the state media that these miners used a high volume of electricity.

This new scandal comes while the regime arrests ordinary citizens for having one or a couple of miners at home. As acknowledged by the state media, the ongoing electricity shortage in Iran is due to the regime’s systematic cryptocurrency mining. These farms are exclusively run by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) to generate income for funding its illicit activities.

The existence of this mining farm in Tehran’s Stock Exchange building comes after months of protests by the defrauded people who the regime deceived into investing in the Stock Exchange Market and later plundered them. There have been dozens of protests by the defrauded creditors in the last few months.

تجمع مالباختگان بورس با شعار مرگ بر روحانی در تهران

The government of Hassan Rouhani, under the supervision of the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, planned a scheme to plunder Iranians using the Stock Exchange market and compensate for his government’s budget deficit. “The reduction of oil and tax revenues would lead to a budget deficit of about 2,000 trillion rials,” wrote the state-run Jahan-e Sanat daily on May 9, 2020.

Khamenei encouraged people to participate in productive investments such as cooperatives and stock exchanges. As a result, the regime was able to deceive and plunder people. “I would like to announce the good news. Due to the measures devised by the government, we could have been able to compensate our budget deficit by selling securities and transferring shares of state-owned companies,” said Farhad Dejpasand, Rouhani’s minister of economics, on October 20, 2020.

“In the first half of this year, we had a very brilliant performance in terms of transferring government shares in state-owned companies, and we managed to earn about 33,000 billion tomans, which is a significant figure,” he added.

Some 70 trillion rials of shares of social security investment companies, or Shasta, were sold to two million people in the form of eight billion shares. This reached 3,600 shares for each stock exchange code or each buyer. These shares were ten percent of Shasta’s capital.

The regime deceived people into investing in the stock exchange by creating a bubble growth and promising a booming stock market. Yet, in January, Tehran Stock Exchange’s (TSE) main index, TEDPIX, rapidly plummeted, and this trend continued, resulting in a massive collapse of the TEDPIX. As a result, millions of Iranians lost their life savings while the regime could compensate for its budget deficit.

The recent scandal of discovering a cryptocurrency mining farm at Tehran Stock Exchange’s building once again indicated the regime’s institutionalized corruption. This corruption has ravaged people’s lives within the last four decades.

“The entanglement of the system’s problems is such that the cost of adopting scientific and logical ways to solve society’s problems becomes heavier,” Etemad daily wrote on Wednesday, acknowledging the regime has no solution for the ongoing economic crisis it has created.

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