Mohammad Sarafraz

Mohammad Sarafraz   (media executive)
Born	محمد سرافراز 1961-04-07 Tehran, Iran
Alma mater	Saint Joseph University, Imam Sadiq University
Children	2
Spouse	Zeinab Lak
Iranian media executive who was sanctioned by the EU as part of the campaign against PressTV. He later came out against the Iranian deep state.  Chairman In office 2007 - 2014 Employer PressTV Preceded by Anthony Cooke

Mohammad Sarafraz is an Iranian media executive who was head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) from 2014 until his resignation in 2016. He was sanctioned by the EU as part of the campaign to ban and shadowban PressTV. He later came out against the Iranian deep state.

Edcuation

He holds a Ph.D. in political sciences from Saint Joseph University of Beirut and MA from Imam Sadiq University . He was active in IRIB since 1993 in different posts and played a crucial role in launching Press TV, Hispan TV, al-Alam and iFilm television channels.

Careers in IRIB

Sarafraz was active in the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) from 1993 and holds the position of deputy director-general in foreign affairs since 1995, being appointed by then director-general Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani. He played a crucial role in launching Press TV, HispanTV, al-Alam and iFilm television channels.

He was the 6th director-general of the IRIB and succeeded Ezatollah Zarghami on November 10, 2014.

Sarafraz's brief term was marred by scandals and controversies, including an outcry over an alleged ethnic slur against the country's ethnic Azeri minority during a children's TV show in November 2015. On 11 May 2016, he resigned from his post due to illness.

EU sanctions

In 2013, the European Union adopted punitive measures against Sarafraz, saying that he was associated with violating human rights and working with the Iranian security services and prosecutors to broadcast forced confessions of detainees.

Iranian deep state

In a 2019 interview conducted by one of his former aides and published on YouTube, Sarafraz said that Iranian intelligence officers can tell judges at the court what they should decide when ruling on various cases.

Sarafraz accused the government and banking system of systematic corruption that has led to vast income gaps among Iranians. He said most of this corruption exists in companies that enjoy the benefits of private firms but pretend to be government entities when they are paying taxes or report their financial status. These companies, he said, leave no room for competition by real private companies.

This has created "systematic corruption which is likely to land the country in deep trouble, Sarafraz said, and added that most of what the intelligence agencies and the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) do in Iran are illegal, but they can get away with it as no one is in control. He said "The same guys and their agents wanted to take over the TV by controlling its financial resources," while claiming that there are Mossad and CIA agents among them.

He said thousands of Iranian filmmakers, actors, and other artists are on a secret government blacklist that bans them from working or having their work shown in public.

 

A Document by Mohammad Sarafraz

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:Press TV CEO response to Ofcom	open letter	28 December 2011	Press TV	The response by the CEO, Dr. Mohammad Sarafraz, to Ofcom's decision to ban Press TV from the UK air waves

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