MOSCOW, June 9 (RIA Novosti) - The main challenger in the Iranian presidential elections has promised to uncover what the current president's administration did with some $1 billion reportedly missing from state funds.
In the run up to Friday's vote, presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi told supporters he would uncover what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did with the money after a National Audit report said more than $1 billion in surplus oil revenues had disappeared from Iran's currency reserve fund in the past four years.
"The people have a right to know how 1 billion dollars that was not returned to the treasury was spent. They have a right to know who has benefited from the rise and fall in tariffs," Mousavi was quoted by Iranian Press TV as saying at a rally in Tehran on Monday.
Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, the two frontrunners in the election, have argued over the economy and corruption during the election campaign. According to a recent poll of approximately 1,000 Iranians by Washington-based public policy institutes Terror Free Tomorrow and the New American Foundation, some 34% support current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and 14% support Mousavi, with 27% undecided.
Ahmedinejad denied the accusations in an interview last Friday, saying it was a simple "accounting error."
"In reality, they had added rials to dollars, and I declared on TV that this was a mistake," he said. "After numerous sessions, it became clear that it was an accounting error."
One U.S. dollar is worth 9,159 Iranian rials.
Mousavi has also claimed that corruption levels in the country have climbed under Ahmadinejad and that he employs family members in top government positions.
