Pilatus chairman was granted asylum in United States, green card in 2012

The chairman of the private bank Pilatus arrested in the United States for breaching sanctions against Iran, had been granted asylum in the United States for political persecution suffered in Iran as a teenager.

Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, 38, is pleading not guilty to breaching sanctions against Iran by facilitating the payment of US dollars to Iranian beneficiaries that included his family business.

The owner of the Maltese private bank Pilatus, Hasheminejad – who acquired a St Kitts & Nevis passport – was granted a green card to reside in the United States in November 2012 after having been forced to live abroad after 2009 due to complications in the immigration process.

[EXPLAINER] Why has Malta’s Pilatus Bank chairman Ali Sadr been arrested in the United States?

The details emerged from tweets by the Financial Times’s reporter Cynthia O’ Murchu on the pre-trial papers presented by Hasheminejad’s attorneys.

Ali Sadr application for pre-trial release: interesting points in lawyer's argument. Granted asylum in US based on political persecution suffered in Iran as teenager. 2009 complications in immigration process forced to live abroad. November 2012 greencard

— cynthiao (@cynthiao) April 10, 2018

Hasheminejad, scion of one of Iran’s richest man and a former chairman of Iranian private bank EN, filed his asylum papers in 2003. It turns out his immigration attorney at the time had been indicted on “wide scale immigration fraud” but Hasheminejad was reported as saying he “had not been aware of [the] lawyer’s misconduct”.

Hasheminejad is accused of setting up companies in Switzerland and Turkey as part of an artifice to hide the beneficiaries of US dollar payments from a Venezuelan housing project his family company, Stratus, was constructing. The payments were made through the US banking system and a Swiss financial institution.

His lawyer was reported as saying that “it is not likely that someone as sophisticated as Mr Sadr would... publicly engage in a project which he understood to violate US sanctions, and then return to live in the United States under his own name, buying a home, opening bank accounts and filing tax returns...

“If he truly understood the far-from-obvious proposition that someone who happened to be born in Iran, living outside of the United States, would be restricted by the US sanctions laws in the course of working on a construction project in South America.”

Hasheminejad is believed to have taken steps to evade U.S. economic sanctions and defraud U.S. banks by concealing the role of Iran in U.S. dollar payments sent through the U.S. banking system.  For example, in 2010, using his St Kitts and Nevis passports, he incorporated two entities outside Iran to receive U.S. dollar payments paid to Clarity Trade and Finance in Switzerland, and the second ‘Straturk’ was incorporated in Turkey.

He then opened U.S. dollar bank accounts for the two companies at a financial institution located in Switzerland to carry out financial transactions and conceal the Iranian nexus to the payments, in violation of U.S. economic sanctions. Specifically, between April 2011 and November 2013, the Venezuela Project Executive Committee made approximately 15 payments to IIHC through Stratus Turkey or Clarity, totalling $115,000,000.

In addition, on February 1, 2012, Clarity wired more than $2,000,000 of proceeds from the project directly into the United States.  Those proceeds were then used to purchase real property in California.

Although he faces a “total” of 125 years from the maximum penalties of the separate fraud charges, the sentences if proven would be served concurrently. The most serious charge is that of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.

Ali Sadr indictment - important point. Reports say he faces a 125 year sentence. There are few circumstances where a sentence has to be served consecutively. Most of the time multi-count sentences are served concurrently. Arithmetic total of each count is misleading.

— cynthiao (@cynthiao) April 11, 2018