From the West-begging of privileged sons to the West-opposing of their fathers
Qalibaf-gate: The controversies surrounding Eshaq Qalibaf began with the release of a court order from the Canadian Federal Court on social media, showing that he had resorted to the judicial system of Canada to obtain residency. Eshaq Qalibaf is one of the sons of Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who had long commanded the police force, served as the mayor of Tehran, and now holds the position of Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly.
According to the published document, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf’s son has filed a complaint with the Canadian judiciary due to the prolonged process of reviewing his residency application and has asked the Federal Court to intervene. The Canadian Federal Court, in its order, has requested the organization responsible for immigration affairs in Canada to respond promptly to Eshaq Qalibaf’s residency request.
Based on the Canadian Federal Court’s ruling, Eshaq Qalibaf filed this request in 2019. According to reports, his case is currently awaiting a security background check report. The result of such a report is necessary for the Canadian immigration officer to decide whether to grant residency to Eshaq Qalibaf.
According to Ardeshir Zarezadeh, an Iranian lawyer in Canada, what is stated in the Canadian Federal Court’s order is not related to the content of the case or its outcome, but rather the court has only commented on the processing time. He emphasized on the social network X and in an interview with Radio Farda that the likelihood of Eshaq Qalibaf’s immigration case being accepted is almost zero.
Who is Eshaq Qalibaf?
There are not many details available about Eshaq Qalibaf’s life. In 2018, the Telegram channel Amadnews, run by the executed journalist Ruhollah Zam, claimed that Eshaq Qalibaf had gone to Melbourne, Australia, with a large sum of money. This is while a year before, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, during the presidential election campaigns, had declared that his son Eshaq’s entire assets consisted of a Nissan car, a motorcycle, and one million tomans.
According to reports, Eshaq Qalibaf went to Australia to pursue a master’s degree in civil engineering at the University of Melbourne and from there migrated to Canada. However, his departure from Iran did not stop reports about his economic activities in Iran. In 2020, Ali Ghafarian, a principled media activist, claimed that the monopoly on wholesale meat sales in Iran was in the hands of Eshaq Qalibaf.
He wrote, ‘In your opinion, how did Eshaq Qalibaf, the youngest son of the Speaker of the Parliament, who studied in Australia, acquire the privilege of wholesale meat sales during his father’s tenure as mayor? It wouldn’t be bad if Mr. Qalibaf, who has never explained his family’s businesses, clarified this time about the privilege.’ Qalibaf has not talked much about his children, but recently during the government-organized march on the 22nd of Bahman, in response to someone who asked about his family’s trips abroad, he said, ‘Is it a sin for the family to travel?’
The controversial case of Eshaq’s request
The migration of the children of any former and current senior officials of the Islamic Republic to Western countries becomes controversial, especially in the dire economic conditions in Iran where people face many difficulties in purchasing basic goods. Critics of the Islamic Republic say that the government’s inefficiency and wrong policies have brought the country to a state where even the children of officials find it unlivable.
Some other critics also point to the existing corruption in the ruling system and the families of officials, interpreting the residency of officials’ children abroad within the framework of the prevailing corruption. The son of Qalibaf, whose father has held key positions in the Islamic Republic for decades, is no exception to this rule. Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who joined the Basij and then the Revolutionary Guard immediately after the 1979 revolution, quickly rose through the ranks in this military and ideological institution of the Islamic Republic.
In the 1990s, he was appointed by Ali Khamenei first as the commander of the Air Force of the Revolutionary Guard and then as the commander of the police force. However, his ambitions did not end there, and he always sought to become president. He ran for the presidential elections several times but failed each time. In the 2000s, he became the mayor of Tehran and held this position for 12 years until he became the Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly. Throughout these years, various reports and documents about Qalibaf’s economic corruption and also reports about the economic corruption of his family members have been published.
Qalibaf has two sons named Eshaq and Elias, with Elias reportedly being a teacher. Qalibaf also has a daughter who is married. During the presidential election debates in 2017, when Qalibaf, the then-mayor of Tehran, ran again, Mohammad Ali Vakili, the spokesperson for Hassan Rouhani’s election campaign, accused one of Qalibaf’s children of economic corruption. Vakili said that the commercial activities of Elias Qalibaf, Qalibaf’s son, both abroad and inside the country, are well-known.
At that time, Ensafnews wrote that Elias Qalibaf, according to a registered advertisement in the official newspaper of the country, is the CEO of the Shams al-Shumus Institute, which has its central office and a non-profit primary and preschool located on a relatively large piece of land in the Saadat Abad area.
Additionally, in 2015, reports were published about Elias Qalibaf’s involvement in the corruption case of the Police Cooperative Foundation. In this regard, the Khabar website, on May 19, 2015, in a report referring to the connection of the former police commander with the discovery of a 1,200 billion toman financial corruption in the Police Cooperative Foundation, wrote that there were also murmurs about the connection of Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and some commanders of the Revolutionary Guard who had gone to the police force with him with this case.
At that time, there were also reports about the arrest of the son of the mayor of Tehran in this regard and his escape to the United Arab Emirates after being released on bail, but these reports were denied by Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the then-spokesperson of the judiciary. The case of astronomical properties, the Yas Holding, Zahra Mosheer Charity (Qalibaf’s wife), and the Qalibaf family’s trip to Turkey, which became known as the ‘Sismoni-gate’, are other items in the reports related to the Qalibaf family’s corruption.
