Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's Massive Wealth

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Reuters, the supreme leader, systematically acquired a vast business empire utilizing the time honored medieval business model of confiscation of private property.

The Ayatollah through his massive business empire, Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam, often simply Setad, controls over 95 billion in real-estate, equity in a variety of industries and other holdings, earned the old fashion way.

According to Iran's news agency, IRNA, Aref Nozori was named director of the Barakat Foundation, a unit of the Setad. Nozori who once headed Setad's real-estate confiscations, may expand the foundations real-estate business. "It is expected that the Barakat Foundation's activities will be more extensive than before."

Setad may have spent 1.6 billion in the past five years on development projects, schools etc. but the numbers are hard to confirm due to secrecy.

Khamenei may have once been a religious leader. He now looks like just another oligarch compromised by the absolute corruptibility of power. The Roman Empire built its wealth by looting gold and keeping slaves, the economics of empire. Colonialism was much the same. Is this not the nature of man? Whither the equality.