Businessman Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, once the wealthiest man in Iran, was hanged one year ago today for embezzling $2.6 billion.

Khosravi rocketed up the world’s rich lists — Forbes estimated that he would slot in around no. 219 in 2012 — during the late 2000s, when he launched the Aria Investment Development Company. This firm sprouted up from a strapling of 50 million rial (just a couple thousand US dollars) to 20 billion rial in just three years — thanks, as investigations ultimately revealed, to a series of bank loans obtained by means of forged documents that bank managers were tricked or bribed into accepting, then using those loans to purchase state-owned companies like Khuouzestan Steel at sweetheart rates.

According to the Associated Press, “Khosravi’s business empire included more than 35 companies from mineral water production to a football club and meat imports from Brazil.” His fall was a gigantic scandal, generally reckoned the largest financial scam in the history of the Islamic Republic.

The condemnation of a top business magnate on the nuclear “corrupt on earth” charge could hardly fail to raise uncomfortable questions about top government officials. In this case allegations of untoward connections were alleged by to go all the way to then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as a political football to discredit the more liberal elements in Ahmadinejad’s Cabinet.

On this day..

• 1726: Étienne-Benjamin Deschauffours
• 1918: A day in the death penalty around the U.S.
• 1989: Stephen McCoy, botched
• 1878: A day in the death penalty around the U.S.
• 1935: Tully McQuate, "If I hang, I hang"
• 1871: Archbishop Georges Darboy, Paris Commune hostage
• 1872: John Presswood Jr., the last legal hanging in DeKalb County
• 1944: Admiral Inigo Campioni
• 2007: Christopher Newton
• 1725: Jonathan Wild, Thief-Taker General and Receiver of Stolen Goods
• 1980: Kim Jaegyu, intelligence chief
• 1917: Dr. Arthur Waite, the Playboy Poisoner