Established on October 7, 1957, Sanati Tolidi Moratab was the official dealer of Land Rovers in Iran and later launched an assembly line to produce the car in the country. The company was nationalized after the 1979 Revolution. Approximately 62 percent of the company’s shares are now owned by Ahrar Markazi Institute, which was established on January 23, 1994, to financially empower former POWs and war veterans, who are also its shareholders. Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) serve as the institute’s executives. In addition to Sanati Tolidi Moratab and other companies, Ahrar owns various properties and land across the country.
On November 29, 2014, a meeting of Ahrar shareholders and the board of directors led to a group of shareholders airing their grievances to the media. By their account, Ahrar was operating without any supervision from Bonyad Shahid, the para-governmental foundation that is supposed to exercise oversight over veterans’ affairs. Shareholders, they asserted, were kept in the dark about the way the institute was run, its subsidiaries, and its finances, and they had yet to receive their requisite dividends. On February 13, 2015, Ahrar’s shareholders finally lodged a complaint with the General Inspection Organization of Iran (GIO). No updates regarding this complaint have been released.
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Yaser Hashemi, Ahrar Markazi Institute
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