The Pahlavi Foundation

Reza Shah, the father of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, seized a great deal of wealth and property during his sixteen years of rule. The indigent Cossack, when he was dethroned in 1941, there were forty-four thousand documents of ownership in his name. His wealth at that time was estimated at seven billion tomans. If exaggerated, it shows his excessive desire for wealth and fondness for accumulating money, anyway. The lands occupied by Reza Shah were equivalent to Luxembourg. When Mohammad Reza Pahlavi succeeded his father, the property and assets came to him.

Reza Shah’s kind of tyranny had been broken for some time, meanwhile, protests and petitions rose to retrieve the property, and the issue was raised in the national parliament, and the press as well.

To stop the rising tide, the young Shah announced that he would give up the assets to the government. A few years later, at the request of the Shah and the approval of the National Parliament (July 1949), the property was returned to the Shah again, and this time Mohammad Reza Pahlavi called them “the endowment of the Pahlavi dynasty” and said it would be used for charity. By establishing the Pahlavi Foundation in 1957, he increased his fortune under the name of the Foundation and ordered that his income be raised by investing in the establishment of banks and companies. In addition to this wealth, the Pahlavi Foundation received millions of dollars over time from the oil company, the Planning and Budget Organization, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of War, the Central Bank and other economic institutions.

The Pahlavi Foundation is owner or shareholder of 19 banks and investment Institutions, 8 mines, 28 chemical and industrial companies and factories, 4 textile factories, 14 companies and factories of construction industries, 43 construction companies, 43 agriculture and livestock companies, 48 commercial companies, and the largest hotels in Iran. The foundation also purchased a skyscraper in New York City’s Fifth Avenue, which with repairs cost $40 million.

In 1961, the Shah once again devoted the capital of the Pahlavi Foundation to charity, and it was overseen by himself. The first director appointed by the Shah for the Pahlavi Foundation was Amir-Asadollah Alam a close friend of the Shah. After him, Jafar Sharif-Emami took the position. In 1979, which was the year of the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty, Ahmad Emami, who had formerly been the Supreme Court prosecutor and one of the judges, received the post and did last no more than a few months.

Some of the work that the Pahlavi Foundation did in charity was providing scholarships, student grants, helping relatives of those who had sacrificed for the Shah, establishing The Institution for Translation and Publication of Books, and medical services. But the other side of the coin was the financial strife and wealth accumulated by the Shah’s court. Almost all members of the Pahlavi family, such as Ashraf Pahlavi (the Shah’s sister), Shahram Pahlavi (Ashraf’s son) and Gholamreza Pahlavi (Shah’s brother) greatly benefited from the facilities of this foundation. They were shareholders and partners of banks and companies covered by the Pahlavi Foundation. The foundation had also provided a moral breakdown of society by investing in the construction and development of casinos and cabarets.

The Pahlavi Foundation was Iran’s largest economic hub during the Shah’s reign and had a key role in determining the economic policies of the country. Therefore, it could be said that its benefits were more reaching the Pahlavi family than the deprived people.

After the fall of the monarchy in Iran, the Pahlavi Foundation was renamed “The Alavi Foundation,” and that part of the property that had been left inside the country and could have not been transferred was under the control of the Provisional Government. By establishing the Mostazafan Foundation, the Alavi Foundation’s property became gradually available to the Mostazafan Foundation.