Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, August 19, 2019—On Sunday, a group of customers of Caspian, a credit firm affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), gathered in front of the Iranian regime’s Central Bank in Tehran and protested to the theft of their investments.
The protesters were chanting, “You stole our money under the guise of having a permit.”
Caspian is one of several credit institutions that declared a large deficit in 2017, wiping away billions of dollars’ worth of investor money. The credit institutions started absorbing investor money three years earlier with trumped-up promises of fast returns on investment. Many Iranians trusted those companies with their wealth and lifesavings.
Those promises never materialized. These credit institutions have strong ties to Iranian regime officials and had gotten permits from the Iranian regime’s ministries. In particular, Caspian was approved by Iran’s Central Bank, leaving no doubt that the Iranian regime and its officials were all in on the scams that the institution was running. Caspian is owned and run by the IRGC, which has a notorious history of wasting the country’s resources on fueling conflicts in neighboring countries and empowering the Iranian regime’s security and repressing apparatus.
The IRGC was officially designated as a terrorist entity by the U.S. administration in April.
Since the collapse of the credit institutions, their customers have been regularly protesting in front of branches of the companies as well as government institutions and the Central Bank, demanding the return of their funds. Iranian officials have given promises, but like their pledges to other protesting sectors of the Iranian society, those promises have yet to materialize.
In the meantime, the outrage and anger of protesters continue to simmer to a boil.
