Accused of Forgery and Theft Becomes Minister of Roads
Accused of forgery and theft, he becomes the Minister of Roads, while the government and parliament continue as usual. Qalibaf talks about new governance, but the practice remains based on connections and favoritism. The proposal to have Mehrdad Bazrpash sit in the former seat of Rostam Ghasemi comes while there were previous whispers about him taking the seat of the Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Trade. Hence, they have dubbed him the man for all ministries.
Mohammad Taheri, an economic journalist, wrote that in this dirty situation, a clean choice could have taken a small step towards restoring public trust. Introducing Mehrdad Bazrpash for the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development is a wrong and costly choice. He is neither a specialist in this field, nor a genius, nor well-reputed, nor does he have experience in this area, nor do people like him. Why did you choose him?
The current head of the Court of Audit, whose political life owes to his presidency of the Basij at Sharif University and later his proximity to Ahmadinejad, had said during a student protest against the execution sentence of Hashem Aghajari as the head of the student Basij at Sharif University, ‘Wherever there is insult, we are there.’
Throughout these years, he has always received a good share of the power pie, although this share has always been accompanied by many controversies. These controversies have always been accompanied by questions about his qualifications and ability to hold that specific position. But Bazrpash has always outpaced his critics through lobbying, from becoming the CEO of Pars Khodro at the age of 27, and then Saipa, when some believed he was not suitable for the post in terms of experience and age, to becoming the head of the Court of Audit.
Forgery Accusation
In the case of Bazrpash’s appointment as the head of the Court of Audit, there was a controversy over his degree and executive records, leading to public protests and open letters from figures like Naderan and Tavakoli. However, in the end, it was Bazrpash who won. To become the head of the Court of Audit, a minimum of 20 years of work experience is required, while Bazrpash’s work experience did not even reach 17 years.
Naderan, a member of the eleventh parliament, says about this, ‘He could not present 20 years of work experience to the parliament, given his age and the periods he claimed to have worked. Therefore, he brought a certificate of his work at that research institute, which I found unacceptable. Later, the person who signed the letter admitted in the Article 90 Commission that the document was forged.’
Now, Mojtaba Tavangar, a parliament member, saw it necessary to once again outline all these controversial and ambiguous records of Bazrpash in a tweet, although he specifically did not dare or did not want to mention his name, a point for which users criticized him. Tavangar wrote about the review of grades and university degrees, plagiarism in the thesis, presenting fake documents to obtain a position, open financial cases in the organization, having no expertise or experience to take over the ministry, pressure to appoint close associates, appointment without inquiry, and unspoken matters.
Late this November, in a harsh reaction to rumors about Mehrdad Bazrpash’s presence in the government cabinet, it was written that for any ministry that is likely to change, this ‘man for all ministries’ pressures through one of the deputies to the president to take that seat. ‘Mr. Engineer, how much ability do you have that you can become both the mayor and the Minister of Roads, the Minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade, and the Minister of Welfare? My brother, why are you so greedy for power?’
Theft Accusation
It is claimed that Bazrpash was accepted into the doctoral program at the order of the Minister of Science, Research, and Technology without taking the doctoral exam, as a conversion from a foreign scholarship to a domestic one. Bazrpash’s scholarship request was sent in the last days of Ahmadinejad’s government, on July 22, 2013, and was approved by the Ministry of Science managers within two days, on July 24. This period coincided with Ramadan.
Additionally, a Twitter account reposted the text of Mehrdad Bazrpash’s doctoral thesis and showed through comparative analysis that extensive parts of this thesis were copied and stolen from books and scientific and journal articles of others, which were published before Bazrpash’s thesis was written. Large and small excerpts from them appeared in the thesis often without any changes. Jamshid Salehi Sadqiani, the head of the Faculty of Management and Accounting at Allameh Tabataba’i University and Bazrpash’s advisor during his doctoral thesis, announced in 2015 that he graduated with a score of about 18.
According to Somayeh Azimi, a journalist, Habibollah Tabatabaian in an interview explicitly accepted the possibility of scientific theft regarding Bazrpash and, while not exonerating himself from any possibility of error and mistake, emphasized that our quality assessment software faces deficiencies due to incomplete support for the Persian language, and such issues are still possible.
Elias Naderan, himself a member of the Eleventh Parliament’s Planning and Budget Commission, warned that if this issue is not addressed, he, along with several representatives, will complete their investigations and present the results to the representatives and the Iranian people, and will continue until a result is achieved. However, Naderan never presented the results of his supplementary investigations to the public.
The newspaper Iran previously reported that the financial statements of Saipa Automotive Company show that Mehrdad Bazrpash, as CEO, along with four other board members, received a bonus of 600 million tomans during the years 2008 and 2009, which, considering the inflation rate, was estimated to be equivalent to 1.6 billion tomans in 2016.
A review of his activities from the official newspaper of the judiciary shows that he has been a member of the board of directors or founder or CEO in 10 government and private companies and institutions from 2005 to 2019.