Iran hangs billionaire businessman AP Photo-ISNA
AP Photo-ISNA-Hamid Foroutan
Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, seen during his trial in Tehran in February 2012, has reportedly been put to death.
A billionaire businessman has been hanged in Iran two years after he was found guilty of orchestrating a £1.5 billion bank scam.
Mahafarid Amir Khosravi was executed at Evin prison, to the north of the capital Tehran, according to state television.
Khosvari was convicted for masterminding a group which used forged letters of credit to buy a range of state-owned companies, including a major steel firm.
The audacious scam, uncovered in 2011, was the largest fraud case witnessed since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and forced the government to deny collusion among some of its members.
Khosvari was one of four people given the death sentence in 2012 for their roles in the mass fraud and was reportedly executed today – to even his own legal team’s surprise – after Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s verdict.
The case raised serious questions about corruption among those running Iran’s economy.
A number of managers at several of the country’s major banks said they were bribed by Khosravi and his associates into supplying the credit documents to fund the illegal investments.
The former head of Iran’s biggest bank, Melli Bank, remains at large after fleeing to Canada when details of the case became public.
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani pledged to fight financial corruption, which had blighted the regime of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when he took to power in August last year.
