Peyman Ghorbani, a former deputy at the CBI and its current head of research, said on Sunday that Hemmati had passed highly-sensitive monetary and economic data to the IMF in 2020 when Iran applied for a loan under IMF’s Rapid Financing Instrument.

Ghorbani said the data included information about CBI’s forex reserves in banks in other countries, which were declining at the time because of US sanctions, as well as data about Iran’s general economic performance.

He said the IMF had used the data in an analytic report about the global economic situation published in April 2021 when Iran was “in the midst of an economic war” with the US.

“At the time, Hemmati claimed while reacting to the IMF report that its estimate about the amount of CBI reserves was an obvious mistake and said the report was an erroneous one that was based on flawed information,” wrote Ghorbani in a thread on his account on the X platform.

The revelations come amid debates in the local Iranian media about the release of some $6 billion worth of Iranian funds in South Korea which is taking place under an emerging prisoner swap deal between Iran and the United States.

Hemmati has sought to belittle the deal by saying that he could have easily secured the release of the CBI funds in other countries when he was CBI governor if he had enough political support.

Ghorbani said, however, that the former chief banker is only trying to deflect blame by criticizing the prisoner swap deal with the US.

DAY/PressTV