A report published by Iran International news channel accused on Tuesday the Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), of smuggling millions of dollars from Iraq to the Guard's accounts in Iran, in cooperation with the Iranian embassy in Baghdad.
The channel, based in London, said it has obtained information that unravels some details about the inner workings of a Quds force unit tasked with smuggling money from Iraq to Iran.
On its Twitter account, it added that the Quds Force smuggled millions of dollars from currency-exchange offices in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala and Sulaymaniyah to the accounts of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran.
“In Iraq, the network is apparently managed by an old Quds Force operative identified as Mahmoud Hasanizadeh, who oversees the job with the help of two Iraqi citizens, Maytham Hamzah Qassem Daraji and Maytham Sadiqi,” the channel said.
It also revealed that Mohammad Tajan-Jari, the financial manager of the 400th unit of IRGC’s Quds Force, was in charge of transferring the funds to the unit’s account in a branch of Ansar Bank in the capital Tehran.
The bank had been founded by the IRGC in 2010 and was officially merged into the IRGC’s official Bank Sepah.
“Tajan-Jari's executive officer in Iraq is Mostafa Pakbatan, an employee of the Iranian Embassy and a member of the Quds Force, who receives the dollars from exchange offices in Iraq,” Iran International noted.
The channel said it had obtained a financial deposit receipt for the account of Hussein Asina, a commercial activist linked to the Quds Force.
It said the information “reveals a summary of the Revolutionary Guards’ money laundering in Iraq, which drained the capital of the Iraqi market.”
