Account for a Reported 484.7 Billion-Toman Debt to Bank Melli

A petition for an independent audit and public accountability over Iran’s largest bank loans

Addressed to: The Governor of the Central Bank of Iran; the Chief Executive and Board of Bank Melli Iran; the Prosecutor General; the General Inspection Organization; the Supreme Audit Court; and the Economic and Article 90 Commissions of the Iranian Parliament

Ordinary Iranians seeking even a modest bank loan must provide guarantors, collateral, proof of income, and extensive documentation. Many wait months for approval. Yet reports about Iran’s banking system suggest that extraordinarily large loans have sometimes been granted to influential individuals and business groups against collateral worth far less than the sums borrowed. In some cases, the eventual fate of these loans has remained hidden from the public for years.

This petition concerns one such case: a substantial debt to Bank Melli Iran attributed to the late industrialist Mohammad Taghi Alaghebandian.

Bank Melli is one of Iran’s largest state-owned banks. Its resources include public capital and the savings entrusted to it by millions of customers. The public therefore has a legitimate right to know how its largest loans were approved, what security was obtained, whether the money was repaid, and who was responsible for any failure to recover it.

We are not asking the authorities to declare anyone guilty without evidence or a fair trial. We are asking them to publish the records, conduct an independent audit, identify any wrongdoing, and recover whatever public funds remain unpaid.

A twelve-year-old allegation that has never received a clear public answer

On 10 November 2014, an Iranian media report published what it described as information drawn from a confidential parliamentary investigation into the country’s banking system. The report named Mohammad Taghi Alaghebandian as Bank Melli’s second-largest debtor at the time and stated that the loans in question had been granted during the period from 2005 to 2011.

According to that report, Alaghebandian’s outstanding debt to Bank Melli amounted to approximately 484.7 billion tomans. The toman is the unit commonly used in everyday Iranian financial transactions; one toman equals ten Iranian rials. The original report compared the sum to approximately $500 million at the exchange rate it used for the period.

The same report put the value of the collateral at approximately 142.4 billion tomans, less than 30 percent of the reported debt.

More importantly, the original loan agreements, collateral assessments, repayment records, and related banking documents have never been made fully available to the public. Nor have we found a publicly accessible judgment or official Bank Melli report confirming the present status of the debt.

That absence of an authoritative answer is the central issue raised by this petition.

Bank Melli should disclose:

• The individuals and companies in whose names the loans were issued;
• The dates, branches, and legal entities involved;
• Whether the reported amount represented the original principal, the outstanding balance, or the principal plus interest and penalties;
• Whether the loans were denominated in rials or foreign currency;
• The stated purpose of each loan and whether the funds were used accordingly;
• The nature and independently assessed value of the collateral;
• Any extensions, restructuring agreements, settlements, write-offs, transfers, or debt-for-asset exchanges;
• The amount recovered and any balance that remains outstanding;
• The legal proceedings undertaken to enforce the debt; and
• The names and positions of the officials who authorized the loans and approved the collateral.

Death does not extinguish a financial claim

Mohammad Taghi Alaghebandian died in October 2017, at approximately eighty years of age. He had been associated with numerous industrial enterprises, including Hegmataneh Petrochemical Company, Karoon Cement, Larestan White Cement, Qazvin Glass, Jam Tile, and several other companies.

His death does not make his children or other relatives personally guilty of any offence. Criminal responsibility cannot be inherited, and no family member should be accused merely because of kinship.

At the same time, death does not automatically extinguish a lawful debt. Under Iranian inheritance law, established debts may be recovered from a deceased person’s estate before the remaining property is distributed among the heirs. The heirs are not ordinarily required to pay more than the value of the estate from their personal assets.

The proper legal course is therefore clear: determine whether the debt existed, establish its correct amount, identify the estate and collateral, examine any relevant transfers of property, and recover the debt from legally available assets.

If the debt was repaid, Bank Melli should publish the date, amount, and method of repayment. If it was restructured, settled, written off, or exchanged for assets, the legal basis and approving authority should be identified. If part of it remains unpaid, the bank should explain what action it has taken to recover it.

The human consequences of financial mismanagement

The companies associated with Alaghebandian employed large numbers of workers. Reports from Karoon Cement, for example, documented repeated delays in the payment of wages and social-insurance contributions. In January 2018, workers told the Iranian Labour News Agency that at least four months of wages remained unpaid, although some older wage and insurance arrears had recently been settled. Further complaints about unpaid wages were reported in 2019.

These labour disputes do not, by themselves, prove that the reported Bank Melli debt caused the company’s financial difficulties. They do, however, demonstrate that poor management, weak banking oversight, inaccessible company accounts, and unresolved corporate debts have consequences beyond balance sheets. For workers, financial mismanagement may mean unpaid wages, lost insurance coverage, job insecurity, and hardship for their families.

The Ministry of Labour and the Social Security Organization should therefore examine outstanding wage and insurance claims at the companies concerned. The cost of disputes among banks, shareholders, and company directors must not be transferred to workers.

Public disclosure remains incomplete

For many years, the identities of Iran’s largest bank debtors were treated as confidential or appeared only in leaked and politically contested lists. More systematic disclosure began in 2022, when the Central Bank started publishing information about large performing and non-performing loans.

By September 2025, the Central Bank’s published lists covered twenty-five state-owned and private banks and included borrowers whose debts exceeded two trillion rials, equivalent to 200 billion tomans, or one percent of the relevant bank’s effective capital base.

This represents progress, but publication of names and balances is not enough. The public also needs to know why borrowers disappear from later lists. Their absence may indicate repayment, partial settlement, restructuring, transfer to another legal entity, a change in classification, or removal for reasons that have never been disclosed.

In the public sources we reviewed, we found no clear and traceable official account of what ultimately happened to the debt attributed to Mohammad Taghi Alaghebandian.

If that debt has been resolved, Bank Melli should say how and when. If it is now recorded under the names of related companies, an estate, a group of connected beneficiaries, or another legal proceeding, the relationship should be explained. A name should not disappear from a public list without an accompanying account of what happened to the underlying debt.

Accountability must respect due process

Iran’s Seventh Development Plan, adopted in 2024, expressly added collusion in the granting of large bank loans and certain failures to repay such loans to the country’s economic-disruption law.

This later legislation does not, by itself, establish criminal guilt for transactions that took place many years earlier. Criminal laws cannot simply be applied retroactively, and every allegation must be examined by a competent and independent court.

Nevertheless, the age of a case should not prevent the investigation of conduct that was already unlawful when it occurred, including bribery, fraud, forged documentation, deliberate misrepresentation, misuse of loan proceeds, unlawful influence over bank officials, or fraudulent transfers of assets.

Accountability must mean a genuine investigation, access to legal representation, the presumption of innocence, the right to present a defence, and the publication of evidence-based findings. It must not mean coerced confessions, politically staged trials, collective punishment, or the death penalty.

The purpose should be to establish the truth, recover public resources, compensate those harmed, and reform the banking practices that allowed the problem to arise.

Our demands

We, the undersigned, call for the following measures:

1. A complete public report from Bank Melli on the loans and debt attributed to Mohammad Taghi Alaghebandian, including the original borrowers, amounts, dates, currencies, collateral, repayment history, extensions, settlements, and present balance.
2. Disclosure of what happened after his death, including any action taken against collateral or the estate and any restructuring, write-off, transfer, settlement, or exchange of the debt for other assets.
3. An independent audit of the loan-approval process, including credit assessments, collateral valuations, compliance with lending limits, and the conduct of the officials who authorized or renewed the loans.
4. An investigation into possible improper influence or misconduct, including any unlawful recommendation, preferential treatment, collusion, deliberate undervaluation of collateral, unjustified extension, or failure to enforce the bank’s rights.
5. Publication of the findings while respecting due process, the right of reply, and the presumption of innocence.
6. A separate investigation of unpaid wages and social-insurance contributions at the companies concerned, ensuring that workers do not bear the costs of disputes among banks, shareholders, and company directors.
7. A searchable and regularly updated public database of major bank debtors, showing the history of each debt, changes in its balance, the value of collateral, restructuring agreements, and the reason any borrower is removed from the list.
8. Quarterly reports from the Central Bank on actual debt recovery, rather than lists that provide names without explaining outcomes.
9. Lawful recovery of any established tax liabilities connected to the estate or related companies, without accusing individuals on the basis of rumour or family association.
10. Protection for journalists, workers, auditors, and whistleblowers who disclose credible evidence of financial wrongdoing in the public interest.

We are not seeking revenge or politically motivated prosecutions. Our demand is straightforward: if the debt was paid, publish the evidence. If it remains unpaid, recover it. If officials or borrowers broke the law, hold them accountable through a fair judicial process. If the original reports were wrong, Bank Melli should correct the record by releasing authoritative documentation.

Banking resources are not the private property of officials, influential business groups, or political insiders. The standards applied to an ordinary citizen seeking a small loan must also apply to those borrowing hundreds of billions of tomans.

Tell the public what happened to the money.

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