A police official in Iran announced Sunday that corruption cases increased 333 percent in monetary value in the first six months of the current Iranian year.

Mohammad Reza Moghimi, the head of economic security police, also stated that the number of corruption cases the police is aware of increased by 61 percent, and the number of the accused in these cases went up by 94 percent compared with last year (March 21, 2020-March 20, 2021).

Although Moghimi implicitly blamed former president Hassan Rouhani, in fact current hardliner president Ebrahim Raisi (Raeesi) was in charge of Iran’s all-powerful judiciary in the period.

Iranian authorities do not disclose details of corruption and embezzlement cases, usually mentioning the accused just be their initials. Large cases are handled either by the Intelligence Ministry or by the Intelligence Organization of the Revolutionary Guard.

Almost all people involved in large corruption cases are either official government employees or appointed to managerial position at state-run economic entities.