Posted on 11/11/2013 8:11:54 PM PST by Beave Meister
(Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls a business empire worth around $95 billion - a sum exceeding the value of his oil-rich nation's current annual petroleum exports - a six-month Reuters investigation shows.
The little-known organization, called Setad, is one of the keys to the Iranian leader's enduring power and now holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills and even ostrich farming.
Setad has built its empire on the systematic seizure of thousands of properties belonging to ordinary Iranians - members of religious minorities, Shi'ite Muslims, business people and Iranians living abroad.
The Reuters investigation, which is detailed in a three-part series, documents how Setad has amassed a giant portfolio of real estate by claiming in Iranian courts, sometimes falsely, that the properties are abandoned. The organization now holds a court-ordered monopoly on taking property in the name of the supreme leader, and regularly sells the seized properties at auction or seeks to extract payments from the original owners.
Reuters reporters identified nearly 300 properties that Setad put up for auction in May alone, many worth millions of dollars.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Billy Ray: "Feeling good, Louis."
“It’s good to be the Ayatollah.”
that’s about 5 times what zuckerberg stole from the winklevoss twins (well, with the help of the guy who almost got appointed to head the fed)
“The organization now holds a court-ordered monopoly on taking property in the name of the supreme leader”
court ordered to take private property, where have I seen that before?
oh right, eminent domain
This is why all the nonsense about Iran’s leaders being suicidal is false. People living the good life don’t want to die. The Iranian leadership like to agitate anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism to distract the Ianian people from their living large but their irrationality is greatly exaggerated.
Communism, monarchy, fascism, it’s all essentially the same (very centralized government).
Iran’s leaders probably aren’t suicidal, but they are willing to expend millions of their nation’s people for the purpose of trying to excite many millions of other Muslims to war against the West for them.
Don’t let the administration here this or they’ll add this to their agenda. OOOps, it probably is their agenda.
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