Quote: An Iranian court has sentenced four people to death for a billion-pound bank fraud that tainted the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to state media.
Iranians, hit by sanctions and soaring inflation, were shocked by the scale of the £1.7bn embezzlement, which was exposed last year, and by allegations it was carried out by people close to the political elite, or with their assent.
Thirty-nine people were tried for the fraud, the biggest in the Islamic Republic's history. Four of those had been sentenced to hang, the IRNA state news agency reported.
"According to the sentence that was issued, four of the defendants in this case were sentenced to death," prosecutor general Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei told IRNA.
Two people had been sentenced to life prison terms, and others received jail sentences of up to 25 years, Mohseni-Ejei said. In addition to jail time, some were sentenced to flogging, ordered to pay fines and banned from government jobs. | 
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