Iranian police arrested a person accused of owing the country’s banking system more than €300 million after receiving foreign currency generated by exports, state media reported on Sunday.
Police identified the detainee only by the initials “A.L.” and described the person as one of the leaders of a network of financial intermediaries, known in Iran as “trustees,” used to transfer export revenues outside the formal banking system.
Authorities said the suspect had received foreign currency proceeds from exports over several years but failed to meet obligations to the banking system. The individual had gone on the run before being located and arrested by economic security police and sent to prison.
Majidreza Hariri of the Iran-China Chamber of Commerce said on X that the detainee had served as secretary of the Iranian Association of Money Changers, a description that may point to Ahmad Lavasani, a former head of the group.
Iran’s central bank dissolved the Association of Money Changers in 2023, citing what it called violations and deviation from its objectives.
So-called trustees became increasingly important as sanctions restricted Iranian banks’ access to the international financial system. Individuals or companies with bank accounts or financial links abroad have been used to receive oil revenues, pay for imports and transfer foreign currency outside formal banking channels.
Zabihollah Khodaeian, head of Iran’s General Inspection Organization, told state broadcaster IRIB in July that some trustees had “betrayed” the country and that one intermediary had failed to return $200 million before leaving Iran.
The Tehran-based Sazandegi newspaper reported at the time that at least 15 trustees had become unreachable while holding billions of dollars in Iranian oil revenues, according to Hariri.
Sazandegi said the judiciary had opened 59 cases involving managers of trustee companies and issued prosecution orders in 43 of them. Authorities were also seeking Interpol Red Notices for 15 trustees who had fled.
Details about trustees’ identities, contracts, fees, financial guarantees and oversight are generally not made public.
Separately, an Iran International investigation found that relatives of some of Iran’s most powerful security figures, including the son of Mohsen Rezaei, were among nine people linked to an oil-sales network that sources said failed to return about $11 billion in proceeds to Iran.
“The fact that a teenager sets out on a route where there is a risk of being shot, a mine explosion or an accident, either to help their family or cover school and living expenses, should be a serious warning to society,” labor activist Abdollah Belvasi told ILNA. “A child should be sitting at a school desk, not on a kolbari route.”
Poverty and unstable household incomes are increasingly affecting children in families living along Iran’s borders, Belvasi said.
A shortage of jobs has also left many young people, including university graduates and accomplished athletes, facing a choice between kolbari, with its risk of death, or migration away from their homes and families, according to Belvasi.
Unemployment and a lack of prospects have prompted many young people in Kordestan to consider leaving their cities or even Iran, Belvasi added.
Economic pressures deepen
Iran has faced years of high inflation, a weakening currency and unemployment, eroding purchasing power and making basic living costs increasingly difficult for many households.
Residents of some border communities have turned to kolbari to earn a living. Kolbars typically carry heavy loads on foot across difficult mountainous terrain, and some have been killed in shootings by Iranian security forces or died in accidents and mine explosions.
The growing gap between wages and living costs, reduced working hours and skilled workers moving into informal employment have highlighted the depth of Iran’s employment problems in recent weeks.
Hormozgan Workers’ House said on Friday that around 20,000 workers had lost their jobs because of an economic slowdown and business closures.
Kolbar deaths risk becoming routine
Deaths among kolbars are gradually being treated as routine news, receiving attention and prompting protests for several days before fading from public discussion, Belvasi warned.
“When a kolbar is killed, a family suffers,” he said. “A breadwinner may be lost, children may be left without a father, or a family may have to contend with medical expenses and disability. If we see kolbari only in terms of numbers and statistics, we ignore the human dimension of the tragedy.”
Government promises have failed to address the underlying conditions driving people into the work, Belvasi went on to say.
“The issue of kolbari cannot be solved simply by confronting the kolbar,” Belvasi added. “If the main causes – poverty, unemployment and the lack of stable job opportunities –are not addressed, the issue will emerge again. The root causes must be addressed.”
Discrimination, uneven development and a lack of employment opportunities remain fundamental problems in Iran’s border regions despite their economic, human and natural resources, according to Belvasi.
Published in The Guardian on August 20, the open letter addressed political prisoners facing imprisonment, torture and execution under the Islamic Republic while also condemning US and Israeli military action against Iran.
“We write in solidarity with Iran’s political prisoners, who are trapped between two blades of a scissors,” the letter said, describing one blade as the Islamic Republic’s authoritarian rule and the other as the US-Israeli military assault.
The letter called for an end to executions and the release of political prisoners, arguing that opposing foreign military intervention should not mean remaining silent about repression inside Iran.
What followed was a fierce argument, particularly among figures on the political left.
Several people initially listed as signatories withdrew their names. Historian Robin D.G. Kelley said the published version was not exactly what he had initially seen.
University of Toronto professor Nisrin Elamin said she disagreed with the content and the process through which her name was added, arguing that the letter created a “false and harmful equivalency” between Iran and Israel.
Academics Rashid Khalidi and Nadia Abu El-Haj also removed their names. Other critics went further, characterizing the letter as contributing to efforts to manufacture consent for war.
Human rights lawyer Gissou Nia said the intensity of the reaction surprised her because she regarded the original statement of solidarity as “the bare minimum.”
For Nia, the dispute is about more than a single letter. She worries that ideology and disinformation can distort how international audiences understand repression inside Iran.
“There’s been a massive problem in terms of how narratives have been constructed since January of this year,” Nia told Iran International’s English language podcast Eye for Iran.
She pointed to internet shutdowns, restrictions on independent reporting and competing accounts of the January crackdown. Nia accused some commentators outside Iran of amplifying narratives that shifted responsibility for the killings away from the Islamic Republic despite evidence implicating its forces, describing some of the rhetoric as “mass atrocity denial.”
The stakes are particularly high amid a dramatic rise in executions.
The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran documented over 900 executions in the first seven months of 2026, including 56 on political or national-security charges. Its database now lists 967 reported executions this year.
Political prisoners welcome attention, with reservations
Roya Boroumand, executive director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, said some former political prisoners she works with were pleasantly surprised to see prominent figures in Western academia and on the left publicly acknowledge their plight.
But the response was not without criticism.
Some felt politics weighed too heavily in the letter and questioned comparisons between their experiences under the Islamic Republic and injustices in Western countries. Others asked why China and Russia were absent if the principle was solidarity with prisoners more broadly.
Still, Boroumand said support for Iranian political prisoners should be welcomed rather than subjected to an ideological test.
“You can't criticize people for doing the right thing because the victims they are talking about are not the right victims in your politics,” she said.
Boroumand said political imprisonment can follow Iranians long after they leave a cell. Prisoners may endure physical and psychological torture and lose jobs, educational opportunities and their health. After their release, they may remain under state surveillance, while their relatives can also face pressure over their activities.
Even exile does not necessarily end it. Former prisoners can receive calls from interrogators and see relatives inside Iran summoned over social media posts made abroad.
“You have to face the people who say you don't exist or you don't matter,” Boroumand said.
Why Iran becomes an ideological argument
Journalist and author Jay Solomon said the backlash should also be understood through the ideological legacy of Iran’s 1979 revolution.
For parts of the anti-imperialist left, he said, the revolution came to symbolize a historic defeat for US power. The Islamic Republic later cast itself as a leading opponent of the United States and Israel, creating a political framework in which criticism of Tehran can be seen as weakening that broader struggle.
Solomon said he was struck by the “callousness” of some responses, which he interpreted as effectively asking political prisoners to accept their suffering for the sake of a broader geopolitical cause.
He also pointed to a political purity test in which criticism of the Islamic Republic can quickly generate accusations that critics are serving Western or Israeli interests. Solomon compared the dynamic with other ideological movements that became increasingly intolerant of internal criticism.
That rhetoric is particularly significant in Iran, where authorities themselves have long portrayed dissidents as agents of foreign powers.
For Iran’s political prisoners, the debate is anything but theoretical. They are living through an escalating campaign of executions and repression while arguments continue abroad over how their suffering should fit into competing political narratives.
“Solidarity is really being in solidarity with people and their plight,” Nia said, “regardless of the politics.”
