Nearly 10 days after he raised a series of rare corruption allegations, Iranian hard-line politician Parviz Fattah continues to face fury from across the political spectrum. Fattah is the director of the Foundation of the Oppressed, commonly known in Iran as Bonyad, one of the country’s wealthiest public institutions controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The organization was founded only two weeks after the 1979 Islamic Revolution with a stated mission to eradicate poverty after it confiscated whopping amounts of land, property and fortunes left behind by the entourage of the ousted ruler of Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his loyalists who had to flee the country in fear of execution by revolutionary courts.

Over the past four decades, Bonyad has grown into a financial empire in control of hundreds of enterprises involved in a multitude of economic sectors, from investment and banking to construction, energy, mines, agriculture and food industries. The foundation’s gross fiscal revenue from its various business activities in 2019 stood above $318 million, while it gained a separate $1.6 billion from property sales.

During a lengthy live interview broadcast on Iran’s conservative state television earlier this month, Fattah opened Pandora’s box by accusing several institutions and politicians of the seizure of properties owned by his organization. Almost all former presidents from Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he said, had seized properties, which the foundation had provided them as offices and only for brief periods.