Tehran – Today, the fight against corruption is one of the most important issues in the world. Therefore, many practices and documents have been designed and implemented to combat corruption.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has passed many laws since the beginning of the glorious revolution in 1979, including the implementation of Article 49 of the Constitution (recognized in 1984).
Furthermore, in recent years, it has taken important legal measures to combat corruption, including ratification of the Merida Treaty (approved by Congress in 2003) and review of existing structures.
Despite these positive and positive measures, many national and international indicators suggest that Iran’s situation fighting corruption still faces serious challenges.
The most important of these challenges, root causes, and reform and combat challenges are:
a) Challenge
1. Sanctions challenges
One of the major challenges facing the Iranian economy is the one-sided and unfair sanctions of the US government. This not only increased the costs of public goods and services, but also created many complications and difficulties in providing public goods and services to people.
Unfortunately, some individuals and institutions are taking advantage of this situation, using foreign exchange resources allocated to basic goods of people who are cheaper than the real dollar exchange rate to change the location of operations, smuggling, embezzlement and consumption.
This is despite the fact that the Anti-Money Laundering Act was passed in 2007 and revised in 2018 10 years later, and furthermore, the Commodity and Currency Act was passed in 2013, amended in 2019, and proposals are currently being made to amend these laws and develop more effective regulations.
It should be noted that cooperation with international organizations faces serious problems due to the imposed illegal sanctions mentioned above.
Iran has made great efforts in recent years to promote regional cooperation, participate in the design and implementation of regional mechanisms, and to participate in the fight against corruption, but uses comparative experiences according to the political will of the government.
2. Management Structure and Procedure Issues
Iran’s management system is plagued by the nature of the institution, the diversity of jobs and the diversity of governance laws, and many exceptions. These have caused unfair discrimination among people due to increased costs and efficiency among employees, and of course the complexity of laws and regulations and perhaps abuse and lack of transparency.
In recent years, several laws have been trying to reform the structure and promote and establish a transparent governance system. There are laws relating to publishing and free access to information (approved in 2008), laws relating to the editing and revision of national laws and regulations (approved in 2010), laws relating to the promotion of health of management systems and combating corruption (approved in 2011), and laws from three powers, executive agencies, and other institutes (approved in 2014).
b) Ability
3. Professional ethics: Respect for people’s rights and law
Agents should know that their duties in the public sector are to prioritize the public interest and provide quality public services to people based on professional ethics guidelines.
In this context, managing the rights of people in several articles, including Chapter 3 of the Civil Service Act (approved in 2007), was an obligation to serve people, and very generally briefly in Article 90 required a detailed explanation of these norms and continuous implementation, evaluation and training of the implementation of those regulations.
Therefore, regulations promoting professional ethics were approved in the second half of 2024, thanks to the three-party cooperation of the Presidential Legal Affairs Bureau, the Ministry of Justice (the Secretariat of the National Authorities for Anti-Corruption Convention), and regulations of the administrative and employment agencies.
To achieve these goals, a working group was established in Article 14 to evaluate, train and guide government agencies each month.
4. Popular culture that fights corruption and participates in preventing corruption
Iran’s corruption is ugly and in the literature, to combat it, thoughtful solutions have been proposed. Saadi Shirazi, a very famous Iranian poet known as the Sultan of Speech in the 13th century, stated:
If a civil servant fails to do the duties of the trustee,
He should be supervised.
If the supervisor ignores the fiduciary’s obligations,
Both the employee and the supervisor must be fired.
Therefore, there is a faint light in Iranian culture for the fight against corruption that should be used in the fight against corruption that leads to the efficiency and effectiveness of this battle. This experience also raises public trust.
This attitude, although slow, led to the approval of the Act on Protection of Corruption Reporters in the second half of 2023. Subsequently, in 2024, reporting infrastructure and its registration and handling were approved in the form of Chapter 2 enforcement regulations on the protection of corrupt journalists.
In this direction, people, private institutions and media should be educated and strengthened.