Iran taps into emergency fund to compensate Ukraine flight victims
The Islamic Republic is to pay families of the victims of the Ukrainian flight it downed earlier this year. But the payment has been secured not from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for the missile attack but from an emergency fund meant for the public interest.
The Iranian government says it will tap into its National Development Fund to pay compensation to the families of the victims of a downed Ukraine International Airlines flight. The jetliner crashed outside the capital, Tehran, in January. None of the 176 people on board survived the missiles fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The exact amount of the compensation for each individual has yet to be specified, an issue that remains a sticking point in negotiations between the Iranian side and Ukraine, the country that owned the aircraft. As the majority of the victims were Iranian Canadians, Ottawa has also been involved in the settlement talks.
Iran’s National Development Fund is meant to be reserved for disasters and can only be tapped under the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In April, Khamenei permitted access to $1 billion from the fund to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Months later, however, the country’s health minister complained that only a small slice had reached the underbudgeted medical system.
The compensation allocated for flight victims has been added as an item to the fund's payment list for the next Iranian fiscal year, meaning that the payment will not reach the victims’ families before March 21 at the earliest.
