Allameh Tabataba’i University Strategic Recommendations for  Administrative Bodies

Allameh Tabataba’i University Strategic Recommendations for Administrative Bodies

Usury in the Banking System of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Utilizing Existing Laws to Address Usurious Processes

Author
Department of Finance and Banking, Allameh Tabataba'i University
Abstract
Usury in Iran's banking system, despite the enactment of the "Interest-Free Banking Operations Law" decades ago, remains one of the most contentious socio-economic issues, the persistence of which can undermine public trust in Islamic banking. At the banking level, the primary source of the crisis is the gap between public expectations for the elimination of usury and people's lived experiences of fictitious profits, formal loan extensions, the alteration of contract nature, and the imposition of contracts such as reconciliation, which reinforce suspicions of usurious operations. From a legal perspective, although Article 595 of the Islamic Penal Code (Book of Sanctions) criminalizes usury, in practice, a section of the judiciary limits the possibility of convicting banks because banks cite the execution of the law and Central Bank authorizations as evidence of a lack of malicious intent, leading to conflicts within the legal system and difficulties in securing customers' rights. At the economic level, usury is analyzed as a factor exacerbating inflation, recession, unemployment, and the unjust distribution of income, rendering the gap between the real return of the economy and bank interest rates problematic from policy and ethical standpoints. Proposed strategies emphasize the establishment of specialized judicial complexes to address organized usury, the drafting of legislative bills in collaboration with universities and the judiciary, defining indicators to identify genuine insolvents and supporting them, establishing bank compensation funds for debt forgiveness of insolvents, and launching a national asset transparency system to evaluate insolvency claims.
Keywords