Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told a meeting of the inspecting bodies of private and public banking on Saturday that improved supervision and monitoring activities would prevent violations of the law, where the inspecting bodies should attend to their duties with much zeal and enthusiasm; “however, a lapse in such preventive activities brought banking corruptions to the headlines of mass media and other social networks, with news stories of arrest of high-ranking officials of banks, effectively depriving the public of their confidence to the financial system and casting doubts on the health of the banking at large,” he emphasized. “In all dossiers on corruption, banking sector has been directly and indirectly involved, inter alia, are Kerman’s Tejarat Bank, Sarmayeh, Dey, and other banks.”
“Banking has been a safe haven in all such cases for corruption to incubate, with high-ranking management turning a blind eye on the corruption underway in inner organizational levels and or actively participating to gain their illicit interests,” he warned.
Jafari Dolatabadi also said that two high-ranking officials have been indicted in the case of Sarmayeh Bank. He ascribed the alleged corruption and the consequent circumlocution by the banks themselves of the cases to the culture of rentier economy and cronyism dominant in the financial system, where the system had been pliable vis-à-vis special privileges granted to individuals with contacts and affiliations to higher places to which banks felt indebted. “The case is further exacerbated when all these cronies file for insolvency and thus easily remaining exempt from further punishment; today, banks are centers of economic power, immense resources, which will definitely lead to corruption and other sorts of abuse. Money brings political power as well and where money-laundering is detected in drug trafficking and smuggle of goods, banks have a hand providing the bedrock for illicit activities under cover,” he emphasized.
He called all healthy banks to distinguish themselves from the contaminated banking system and stand apart through effective supervision and monitoring which rules out the corruption and possibilities of abuse.
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