Iran Press/ Middle East: According to the former MEK member who personally oversaw the transfers, Saudi officials operating within the security apparatus of Turki bin Faisal al Saud, the head of Saudi intelligence at the time, and the late king Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, gave the MEK three tons of solid gold, at least four suitcases of custom Rolex watches and fabric covering the Kaaba, the most holy site in Islam. The transfers were worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
According to Press TV, Massoud Khodabandeh, who used to head security for MEK’s top leaders and was one of its most-senior members, described to Al Bawaba a network of smuggling and black market sales that Saudi used to fund the MEK covertly.
Gold and other valuable commodities were be shipped from Saudi Arabia to Baghdad. Then, they would be sold in black markets in Amman, Jordan via Saudi-linked businessmen; the money would go to offshore accounts linked to the MEK, funding their operations.
Khodabandeh also stressed that in addition to regular payments from former Iraqi dictator Saddam , the MKO also received sums from Iraqi oil exports to Britain.
He explained that after the fall of Saddam, Prince Turki became the terror outfit's main supporter.
“I would say that after the fall of Saddam, the MKO which was then being run by Massoud [Rajavi] under the patronage of Saddam, changed to the organization run by Maryam [Rajavi] under the patronage of Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud,” he said.
The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community. Its members fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it enjoyed Saddam's backing.
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Some member of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MKO) left Iran to stay in Iraq, where Saddam , who invaded Iran in 1980, gave them a haven. Many took up arms and fought against their Iranian countrymen, earning the group the unofficial nickname monafegheen, or the “hypocrites.” That title has stuck, and most Iranians inside the country, regardless of their political tendencies, refer to them as such.The group is loathed by most Iranians, mainly for the traitorous act of fighting alongside the enemy.
The group was long a fixture on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations for having killed American citizens. John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser and others successfully lobbied to have the designation removed in 2012. That did little to change how average Iranians think of the organization.
Bolton’s hawkish views on Iran mirror those of Israel, Saudi Arabia and one of his key ideological partners, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MKO).
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