NCRI – In his remarks on the smuggling of goods in Iran on Tuesday October 18, Assadollah Asgaroladi, member of Iran chamber of commerce, has stated: “in addition to foreign trade, we are faced with an estimated $15 billion smuggling in terms of imports and exports which has been hidden from all the ministries.”
The member of Iran chamber of commerce added: “I ask the President to oblige all the organizations to follow the same route regarding the foreign trade… we have had 60-70 percent success during the post nuclear deal era and we are making progress.”
Earlier, Ghasem Khorshidi, an spokesman to the Department of Combating Smuggling of Goods and Currencies, had stated that much of their activities have been focused on borders and entry points. “99 percent of our capacity in combating smuggling has been concentrated in borders and entry points and only one percent of our capacity has been dedicated to supply chain. in the first six months of this year, a total of 700 billion Tomans of smuggled goods and currencies have been discovered, only 70 billion Tomans of which is associated with the supply chain which further proves the point”, said Ghasem Khorshidi.
Islamic Republic officials have repeatedly spoken of the Billion-Dollar-Smuggling as well as the inability of government and regime’s organizations to fight against it.
Ali Larijani, Iranian regime’s Parliament Speaker, has recently said: “we have a bottleneck in our economy and that is smuggling.” He added: “like a leprosy, the smuggling in our country is destroying our economy. At the moment, there is an estimated $20 billion annual smuggling with which no factory can compete. Much of the problems we have in the country today is related to smuggling, which is also growing in terms of its diversity.”
Majid Mohammadi, sociologist and an analyst on organized smuggling in Iran, says that “a Parliament Speaker (Mehdi Karroubi) and a President (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) have clearly spoken of the Revolutionary Guard’s illegal harbors for importing smuggled goods to the country. But these statements have had no effect on stopping the Revolutionary Guard’s economic activities regarding the imports and exports of smuggled goods.”
Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s President, had also said in this regard: “when you are going to produce something, you will be faced with a corrupt body which I’m not going to name it. My question is how this body (IRGC) can import smuggled goods?
