US investigators visited FIAU offices over Pilatus probe

United States investigators probing the activities of Pilatus Bank’s chairman Ali Sadr Hasheminejad were in Malta to speak to officials at the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit in late 2017, this newspaper has learnt.

The investigators were preparing to finalise the set of charges that earlier this week saw the arrest of Hasheminejad at Dulles airport, Virginia on various counts of fraud, breach of US sanctions and even money laundering. Hasheminejad was a US resident with property in Washington DC.

MaltaToday’s source said the American investigators had consulted with the FIAU in late 2017 as part of their investigations.

The FIAU had already conducted compliance visits at Pilatus Bank, the bank owned by Hasheminejad through the holding company Alpene, which is registered in Hong Kong.

The compliance visits carried out in 2016 prompted a letter from the FIAU’s then director Manfred Galdes to the Commissioner of Police Michael Cassar, requesting an investigation of the bank’s operations. But the police commissioner resigned in two weeks after receiving the letter in April, and no investigation took place.

Hasheminejad’s bank catered to high net worth individuals, with exploratory talks to set up the bank in Malta starting in 2012. The US charges brought against him, for skirting US sanctions against using dollar payments for Iranian beneficiaries, relate to activities that predate the set-up of the bank, which was licensed in Malta in 2014.

But the modus operandi detailed in the charges brought against him by the New York south district Attorney General, open a window into the personalised services Pilatus offered to clients and politically-exposed persons who may have encountered problems justifying the origin and movements of their wealth. Typical clients included the son of Angolan dictator Jose dos Santos, as well as Azerbaijani millionaire Manuchehr Khangah, known to be close to the all-powerful Azeri minister Kemaleddin Heydarov.