Khamenei's Wealth and Power

I'm reading an article (published yesterday Nov, 11, 2013) about Iranian Supreme Leader's (Khamenei) Wealth and Assets. This is a three-part article. Part three will be out tomorrow.

A little bit of background first:

Khomenei, the founder of the Islamic republic of Iran, passed away in 1989. It was hard to find a successor that embodies Khomeini's qualification, leadership quality and charisma. The one person who knew the political system well and was a big supporter of it was sacked by Khomeini himself. The sacking of Khomeini's deputy, Montazeri, for irrecoverable differences became a huge scandal over the period of time among political Shias, especially since it was found later on that Montazeri was probably framed and had least blood on his hands than the rest of the political Ayatullahs. After participating in Khomeini's strict Islamic regime, the ever devious Hashemi Rafsanjani thought the least evil candidate was the humble junior Ayatullah with the least religious qualification and not overtly obvious political aspiration by the name of Ali Khamenei. Rafsanjani, playing on the emotions of Khomeini's supporters who by then were still distraught over the death of their leader, managed to swiftly pass Khamenei's candidacy across the now almost worthless majlis (assembly of experts) which then was responsible for evaluating Supreme Leader qualification and personality(?). Much has been written on this; look it up if you are interested. Over the years, Khamenei, knowingly or unknowingly, had assembled mass powers and also wealth for his supporters much to the disgust of the ordinary Iranians.


The article that I'm reading goes behind the secretive world of Iran's supreme leader; people and organization associated with him. Like always, everything that comes out of Iran are not 100% truth or false. So treat everything as if it's half-truth.

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part2