Nearly 10 days after he raised a series of rare corruption allegations, Iranian hard-line politician Parviz Fattah continues to face fury from across the political spectrum. Fattah is the director of the Foundation of the Oppressed, commonly known in Iran as Bonyad, one of the country’s wealthiest public institutions controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The organization was founded only two weeks after the 1979 Islamic Revolution with a stated mission to eradicate poverty after it confiscated whopping amounts of land, property and fortunes left behind by the entourage of the ousted ruler of Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his loyalists who had to flee the country in fear of execution by revolutionary courts.