Pilatus owner tells court he needed ‘Plan B’ when US revoked asylum and faced removal to Iran

The Pilatus Bank owner Ali Sadr Hasheminejad told a US court yesterday that he had been tortured in Iran when he was arrested while studying at Tehran University in 1999.

Answering questions from his defence lawyer Brian Heberlig, Hasheminejad appeared in court to face charges of breaching US sanctions against Iran by processing $115 million in dollar payments from a Venezuela housing project to his family company.

Hasheminejad told the court that the Venezuelan housing project, built by his family’s IIHC company, had first discharged payments in euros through an Iranian state bank; but the money got held up for months. The company later accepted US dollar payments, which were paid through the US banking system, into a Swiss bank account, and finally to the family company Stratus Turkey.

In his motion for acquittal, Hasheminejad’s lawyers say the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that their client intended to make it difficult for the Office of Foreign Asset Control to enforce the sanctions against Iran, and that he used fraudulent and dishonest means, or willingly entered into a conspiracy knowing of that unlawful aim.

“The lack of risk of any harm in this case is driven home by the fact that OFAC did not open an investigation into the transfers charged in this matter, even after it learned that payments that Stratus Turkey originated and received had been rejected or flagged as part of the banks’ screening process…

“When banks reported two of the charged transfers in this case as possibly involving Iranian entities, OFAC apparently did nothing. The government has shown two examples in this case. First, it introduced a SWIFT message in which J.P. Morgan stated that it had rejected a payment from Stratus Turkey to Farshid Kazerani because the payment allegedly involved ‘an Iranian institution’, and the bank had reported the rejected transaction to OFAC. Second, the government produced he June 16, 2011 letter from Commerzbank to OFAC in which the bank flagged a payment from Venezuela to Hyposwiss for which Stratus International Contracting Company was listed as the beneficiary, ‘since Stratus may be an Iranian Company.’ Despite the two notices to OFAC in this case, [senior enforcement officer] Ted Kim testified that he was unaware of any investigation by OFAC into the payments involved in this matter.”

Hasheminejad, whose father runs a private bank with over 10,000 employees, told the court he wanted to leave Iran for the United States, where he had already visited at the age of 14. “My mother and sisters moved to the US in 1998, but I was supposed to do military service,” Hasheminejad said, who did not serve in the Iranian army. He moved to New Jersey in May 2000, and then to Washington D.C. A Cornell graduate, he moved into real estate with his company Span, to build a shopping centre for renting. After selling it, he started private equity firm A&R Capital Partners, to specialise in seed capital for start-ups.

Hasheminejad also told the court he had successfully applied for asylum in the United States, but the application was revoked, together with his work authorisation, when his representative lawyer fell under investigation.

Forced to leave the US, Hasheminejad says he “called his dad and uncle. I needed a Plan B: a St Kitts & Nevis passport. Later I got a US green card in November 2012. And I returned to DC with my wife. Unfortunately we got divorced.”

Hasheminejad said the SKN citizenship programme was “a fast-track option”.

He then moved to Dubai, then Switzerland and Turkey. He also said he had visited Iran to see his father who was undergoing chemotherapy.