From Tehran to London: Partnership Between a Reform Party Donor Billionaire and an Iranian Regime-Linked Foundation?

The Guardian revealed in an exclusive investigation that British-Iranian businessman Sasan Ghandhari (Hossein Ghandhari), the new billionaire who pledged to donate millions of pounds to Nigel Farage's Reform party, was a partner in a joint venture with a powerful Iranian religious foundation under the authority of the Supreme Leader between 2013 and 2016, in transactions that raise questions about his previous ties to the Islamic Republic.

The newspaper explained that Ghandhari (61 years old), who says he manages a $10 billion fund, was the main investor behind a deal to build a fiber optic cable for transmitting communications through Iran, as his company "Ori Group" owned 49% of the joint venture "Omran Razavi International" in 2015, while the remaining 51% was owned by the "Astan Quds Razavi" foundation in the city of Mashhad. This is a multi-billion-pound religious foundation headed at the time by Ayatollah Abbas Vaez Tabasi, who was appointed by the first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini and remained close to his successor Ali Khamenei until his death in 2016.

The newspaper noted that the United States imposed sanctions on the foundation in 2021, describing it as controlling "vast areas of the Iranian economy, including assets confiscated from political dissidents and religious minorities, for the benefit of the Supreme Leader and senior government officials," and that the joint venture ended in 2016 after entities backed by Ghandhari were ousted following the appointment of a hardliner to replace Vaez Tabasi.

The newspaper concluded that Ghandhari's lawyers said it would be "misleading" to describe him as "working with Iran" without the context that Tehran targeted him after 2016 with false accusations of working with hostile Western powers, and that his involvement aimed to promote political change by expanding access to information, and that US and French authorities approved the project, and that he has not visited Iran for 30 years and had his properties there confiscated in 2016, while Tom Keatinge from Chatham House said working in Iran "was always a risky business" due to the overlap between the state and the private sector, and that it is "very difficult to work in that country without touching a live wire."