Pilatus Bank owner Ali Sadr goes on trial in New York, Henley owner Christian Kalin called to testify

Pilatus Bank owner Ali Sadr Hasheminejad will on Monday stand trial in the court of the Southern District of New York, accused of having breached United States sanctions against Iran.

The Iranian, who obtained St Kitts & Nevis citizenship, had his private bank shuttered by the Malta Financial Services Authority soon after his arrest at Dulles airport, Washington, in February 2018.

Hasheminejad is charged with having used the US and Swiss banking systems to transfer millions from a Venezuela housing project, to his Iranian family’s construction business in Turkey, in breach of US sanctions against Iran.

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In the list of witnesses who will testify in the trial in New York, is also the chairman and founder of Henley & Partners, Christian Kalin, who devised the sale of Maltese citizenship introduced by former prime minister Joseph Muscat.

The indictment alleges that the Iranian International Housing Corporation, a private company incorporated in Iran and allegedly controlled by Hasheminejad and his family, contracted with a Venezuelan state-owned company to build 7,000 housing units in Venezuela for approximately $476 million.

The Venezuelan company paid IIHC for its construction services by sending wire transfers in US dollars from its foreign bank accounts, to foreign bank accounts in Switzerland belonging to Clarity and Stratus Turkey, controlled by the Iranian business family.

The Venezuelan company made approximately fifteen payments to Stratus Turkey and Clarity, totalling approximately $115 million between 2011 and 2013.

The U.S. government alleges that these payments violated the United States’ sanctions against Iran because they were processed by U.S. banks who exported financial services indirectly to IIHC in Iran. Based on this allegation, the government charged Hasheminejad with six counts involving conspiracy to defraud the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control, conspiracy to violate several Iran sanctions regulations, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Lawyers for Pilatus banker call on court to dismiss Iran sanction charges

Hasheminejad’s lawyers claim the charges are based on false statements about his links to the Iranian government. “The April 2014 affidavit falsely claims that Sadr, his company (Clarity), his family, and his father’s company (Stratus Group) have ‘links’ to ‘entities that have been sanctioned by OFAC… for supporting Iran’s nuclear weapons program, proliferation activities, and support of terrorism.’ But the affidavit cites no evidence to support this significant claim, and in fact, neither Sadr nor any of the individuals or entities described in this paragraph have any connections whatsoever to nuclear weapons or terrorism.”

The lawyers are also attacking the charge of sanctions breaches over the use of US dollars to Iranian beneficiaries, because the money was never directly wired to Iran from Venezuela, or stayed inside the United States or other European countries.

“The government ultimately abandoned the false claim of US dollar transactions between Venezuela and Iran in the October 2015 affidavit. Effectively admitting that its previous affidavits were deceitful, the government changed ‘large, US-dollar transactions between Venezuela and Iran’ to ‘large, US-dollar-denominated payments… which primarily originated from Venezuela’ and ‘disguise[d] the Iranian connection of the recipients’.”