She was born in 1919 in Tehran's Sangelaj district and was throughout her life famous for her ethically corrupt personality, narcotic drugs trafficking, financial corruption and fabulous frauds.
In Imperial Court Minister Assadollah Alam's memories we read that once General Fathollah Minbashian in a meeting with the treasure minister of the time asked him for loans for the Army officers who were abroad for medical treatment, arguing that the asked amount was way below the cost of the hobbies of Princess Ashraf abroad, resembling a drop versus an ocean.
In the year 1960 Ashraf Pahlavi was arrested in a Geneva store accused of trafficking heroin worth two million dollars. She was famous a drug mistress inside Iran, too, till the victory of the Islamic Revolution when she fled the country.
Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi had said that Prime Minister Amir-Abbas Hoveida had once paid Ashraf $350,000 for her personal affairs. Zahedi had added that Ashraf had intended to take along with her one of her boyfriends to a UN session and he had said that he needed that amount to arrange for that attendance and the cabinet ministers had approved of paying the amount.
A close companion of the imperial family Parviz Raji is quoted as saying by a Western historian that during the course of the Islamic Revolution the Shah had asked Ashraf to leave Iran because the people looked at her as the symbol of the system's corrupt nature.
She transferred all her palace furniture abroad before leaving the country, some to her son's palace in England and some to France.
Despite open corruption of Ashraf, during his brother's rule in Iran she was the head of such major national organizations such as the Imperial Social Welfare Organization, deputy head of the Anti-Illiteracy Campaign Committee, head of the Iranian Women's Organization head of the Iranian Committee of Human Rights, and Iran's representative in Un Human Rights Commission.
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Tehran, Jan 8, IRNA – Ashraf Pahlavi, the twin-sister of the ousted last Shah of Iran Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi, died in Monte Carlo, France, at 96 on Friday.
