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The "business juggernaut" controlled by Iran's Supreme Leader

Startling revelation about who controls the purse-strings in Iran as a result of an investigation by Reuters........

"Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls a business empire worth about $US95 billion ($102 billion) a sum exceeding the value of his oil-rich nation's current annual petroleum exports - a six-month Reuters investigation shows.

The little-known organisation, called Setad, is one of the keys to the Iranian leader's enduring power and now holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills and even ostrich farming.

Setad has built its empire on the systematic seizure of thousands of properties belonging to ordinary Iranians - members of religious minorities, Shi'ite Muslims, business people and Iranians living abroad.

The Reuters investigation documents how Setad has amassed a giant portfolio of real estate by claiming in Iranian courts, sometimes falsely, that the properties were abandoned. The organisation now holds a court-ordered monopoly on taking property in the name of the supreme leader, and regularly sells the seized properties at auction or seeks to extract payments from the original owners.

Reuters reporters identified nearly 300 properties that Setad put up for auction in May alone, many worth millions of dollars.

The organisation's full name in Persian is "Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam" - Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam. The name refers to an edict signed by the Islamic Republic's first leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, shortly before his death in 1989. His order spawned an entity intended to manage and sell properties abandoned in the chaotic years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

According to one of its co-founders, Setad was created to help the poor and war veterans and was meant to exist for just two years.

Almost a quarter-century on, Setad has morphed into a business juggernaut with real estate, corporate stakes and other assets. While Setad controls a charitable foundation, it's not clear how much money goes to charity."

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