Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Majlis Commission Confirms : "Luxury Cars were imported instead of medicine"

Maserati Celebrations in Iran
It was a story that started in the Guardian by Saeed Kamali, the pro-Rowhani Iranian journalist who nominated Hasan Rowhani for the Nobel Peace Prize. Manouchehr Esmaili-Liousi, a haemophiliac patient had died as a result of a hiking accident and never even got to the hospital, but the story of the tragic accident was changed into a haemophiliac boy in Iran "dying in hospital after his family failed to find the vital medicine he desperately needed for his disease."

"Sanctions are Causing Medicine Shortage in Iran and Killing Patients" soon became the sexy preferred headline in the Western media. Western newspapers and news sites raced each other with similar news headlines and the Islamic Republic lobby groups in the West had a feast with yet another too common phenomenon of lazy journalism in the Western mass media. See also NIAC Profiteering from Deceit. Only the Times of London reported what was actually taking place on the ground in Iran.

Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, Ahmadinejad's health minister at the time, was not saying what the Western media were regurgitating, she kept publicly complaining that the $2 Billion in the annual budget, allocated to import medicine with,  was not received by the health ministry.

It was a bizarre situation in which, Iran's health minister kept repeating the medicine shortage was nothing to do with sanction and yet the Western media kept repeating, sanctions were causing the medicine shortage in Iran!

Islamic Republic's first female health minister, Marzieh Dastjerdi,  finally paid the price for her outspoken remarks and was unceremoniously sacked by Ahmadinejad. Now 18 months after, the Islamic Republic's Article 90 Majlis Commission, has endorsed her claims. The allocated $2 Billion with subsidised currency rate which should have gone to the Health Ministry to import medicine with, was  instead being used to import luxury cars.

Nader Ghazipour, the MP for Oroumieh and a member of the Majlis team investigating the luxury import of cars corruption said the list of companies who used subsidised currency rate to import luxury cars, amounted not to just one or two pages but to several pages and names of some government officials can be seen amongst them.

"The crime of Mrs. Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi, who was sacked by Ahamdinejad, was that she exposed the secrets. She said luxury cars were being imported with the medicine money and she was right" - Ghazipour told the Majlis.

1 comment:

Waybec said...

'Getting sacked for exposing the truth.' 'Lazy Western Journalism.' I think we all said it at the time didn't we Potkin? Just like we'll now say that even though the Majlis now admits it, only sucker punched lowly bureaucrats will take the scape goat rap for this, rather than the real corrupt Regime high ranking officials responsible.