Gholam Hossein Nozari, a former oil minister, is chairman of Tadbir Energy Development Co, Setad's energy-holdings division, as well as Pars Oil, in which Setad holds a stake, according to the companies' websites. Iran has been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to have Nozari named secretary general of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
In August, newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani named Hossein Dehghan as defense minister. Dehghan served as chairman of Iran Mobin. Last month, Rouhani named Mohammad Shariatmadari - the person who had served on Setad's board and who allegedly sought a loan from Parsian Bank - as vice president for executive affairs.
Keshtli, Nozari and Dehghan did not respond to interview requests.
No ordinary charity
Setad's expansion appears to continue. In May, its charitable foundation, Barakat, announced it was entering "into new pharmaceutical fields," including biotechnology, nanotechnology and gene therapy. The charity runs a unit called Barakat Pharmaceutical Co that, according to the unit's website, has more than 20 subsidiaries and had more than $1 billion in sales in 2011.
One of Barakat Pharmaceutical's units is ATI Pharmed Pharmaceutical Co. Barakat Pharmaceutical describes ATI as a joint venture between it and a Swiss company, Stragen Pharma SA, to produce oral contraceptives. ATI's website displays information about a number of Stragen products that the Iranian company says it has licensed to produce in Iran. It is not clear whether production has begun.
Officials at Geneva-based Stragen - which according to Barakat Pharmaceutical owns 34 percent of ATI - didn't respond to requests for comment.
Last October, Khamenei warned that family planning would lead to an aging population. "One of the mistakes that we made - and I am also responsible for this mistake - is that the issue of limiting the population growth should have been stopped from the decade of the '70s (1991 in the Western calendar) onward," he said in a speech.
The business empire controlled by Iran's supreme leader had grown so large that it now owned companies whose products Khamenei opposes. That expansion was the direct result of a legal strategy that came from the very top.
REUTERS
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