Corrupt Managers of Raisi’s Government
Nothing, like the stock market, can symbolize the political, social, and economic situation of our country in the past four or five years. If you recall, back in 2020, everyone from the then-president down was encouraging people to rush into the stock market. People, hoping for profit and a dream life, sold their normal lives and bought stocks like Khoshtar, Dara-1, and Amin-2. Unemployed people became signal sellers, telling others to buy stocks like Tamlat in exchange for a few million. The most iconic image of that era was the famous tree in the village of Mal Mala, which was showcased in the media as a successful stock market model.
The villagers would sit under the tree, brainstorming and analyzing together to decide what to buy and sell. A state TV reporter enthusiastically narrated their story, presenting them as a successful model. Two years later, when reporters revisited them, one of them, who had sold three shops to invest in the stock market and was now working as a laborer in Bushehr, said that all the villagers had perished.
After that devastating stock market flood, none of the encouragers, be it officials who wanted to channel the turmoil of other markets into the stock market or the experts and signal sellers, took any responsibility or felt any guilt for selling dreams to the people. Because of this, one can trace the stock market’s impact over these years and narrate the pain and suffering of these people.
One of the climaxes of this story was the remarks of the late president during the election debates, where he promised to immediately resolve the stock market issue. If we consider that point as the start of the government, since his most serious promise alongside the housing issue was the stock market, the end of this government is quite symbolic with what is now famously known as the ‘Amashqi loan,’ concluding again with the stock market. A bitter and shameful end for the stock market in the thirteenth government.
Mr. Eshqi, as the highest manager who was supposed to quickly solve the stock market issue, leaves the market by adding a bigger problem without having improved the situation of the stock market one bit in these three years and more. Mr. Majid Eshqi, with his typical governmental manager demeanor, in response to the extensive criticism regarding the billion-toman interest-free loan granted to himself and the board members of the stock exchange, makes two points that are worth pondering.
Two points that have been the approach of many government managers, with the hope that this is the last time. Like all managers, he first accuses the critics of telling a big lie. His reference for this accusation is a resolution that legally allows the board to grant loans. In fact, while accusing the critics of lying, he does not deny the act of granting the loan to himself and just says it was according to a certain legal resolution. He also does not answer the question of why, if it was a resolution, such an action was taken during the government’s transition period when it was certain they would soon leave their positions.
In fact, the senior government manager who was supposed to quickly resolve the stock market crisis, in the last days of his management of this organization, instead of presenting a report card of his presidency and answering what issue he finally resolved, is busy legitimizing how he granted himself an interest-free loan of two billion and some from the public treasury.
His second point is that the employees of the stock exchange organization have special conditions, and therefore they deserve such a loan. I do not know what he means by special conditions, but I doubt that the conditions of the stock exchange board members are more special than those of millions of retirees who are struggling with their daily living and whose salaries do not cover standard nutrition. The same retirees who, to get a loan worth a fraction of that two billion and seven hundred million, are run around by a bank employee for months and are eventually told that they are too old to receive this loan.
It would be more than a seventy-volume book if we wanted to compare Mr. Eshqi’s special conditions with other segments of society who are galaxies away from the facilities mentioned in his resolution. Segments many of whom, by coincidence, are the very people who lost their money in the stock market. But it seems the story of the stock market in the thirteenth government had to start as a fantasy and end grotesquely.
