Ahmadinejad car fetches $2.5 mn in bid
Tehran: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 1977 Peugeot 504 sold for $2.5 million (1.8 million euros) in an international auction on Tuesday, the State Welfare Organisation website reported.
The "company who purchased the car for 25 billion rials wanted to remain anonymous," it said after the auction in the southwestern city of Abadan.
"My client bought the car because of a personal interest in President Ahmadinejad and his spirit of anti-arrogance and anti-Zionism," said lawyer Mahmoud Esari, who acted for the firm that bought the car.
Welfare Organization chairman Ahmad Esfandiari said "more than half a million bidders registered on the bidding website, with most saying they were doing so since President Ahmadinejad leads a simple life and because of his anti-arrogance and anti-Zionist stances."
He said there were bids from "Europe, Asia and the United States."
On January 1, Ahmadinejad launched a website (www.ahmadinejad-car.com) to invite international bids for the car, with the proceeds funding a project to build 60,000 homes for the disabled and needy women who are providing for their families.
Ahmadinejad has always cultivated an image as a "people's president" and friend of the poor.
After he was first elected president in 2005, he was required by law to make an asset declaration and listed a 40-year-old 175-square-metre (1,900-square-foot) house in a lower-middle class part of east Tehran, the contents of two bank accounts and his ageing white Peugeot.
Following his controversial re-election in 2009, he vowed to put "housing, employment and economic reform" at the top of his agenda after house prices soared during his first term.
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