Revealed: billionaire Reform donor was in business with foundation linked to Iranian regime

Nigel Farage (left) with Sasan Ghandehari, who says he runs a $10bn fund called HP Trust. Photograph: Jeff Gilbert/Alamy View image in fullscreen Nigel Farage (left) with Sasan Ghandehari, who says he runs a $10bn fund called HP Trust. Photograph: Jeff Gilbert/Alamy Revealed: billionaire Reform donor was in business with foundation linked to Iranian regime Exclusive: Sasan Ghandehari’s partnership with religious foundation raises questions about past dealings with republic criticised ’s newest billionaire donor was in business with a powerful Iranian religious foundation under the authority of the country’s supreme leader, raising questions about his past dealings with the hardline republic. Hossein Ghandehari, also called Sasan, was little known in the UK until he pledged to give millions to Reform UK this summer and donated £50,000 to Farage to cover the cost of two passes for the Davos World Economic Forum. He has said he is moving his tax residency from Switzerland to the UK in order to make “regular payments” of more than “one or two million” to the party. The 61-year-old Iranian-born British businessman, who says he runs a $10bn (£7bn) fund called HP Trust, has declined to give details about how his family made its money beyond saying the fund owns assets in Europe and North America. Now, a French arbitration decision unearthed ’s past dealings with Iranian state-linked entities between 2013 and 2016. It also reveals Ghandehari’s further Iranian business links to another Reform UK donor, John Richard Simpson, an administration professional and church warden from Potters Bar, north of London. Simpson’s design firm, Interior Architecture Landscape, counts the Ghandehari family as a client and gave £200,000 to Reform UK last year. Farage has been highly critical of Iran over the past year, and in March accused it of being a bigger danger to the UK than Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. The French judgment reveals that Ghandehari was the major investor behind a deal to supply and build a fibre-optic cable to carry telecoms traffic across Iran in a joint venture with a state-linked Iranian partner. The businessman’s HP Trust was the ultimate owner of Ori Group, which took a 49% stake in the venture, called Omran Razavi International Co, in 2015. The other 51% of the venture was owned (AQR), a multibillion pound religious foundation in Iran’s second city of Mashhad. AQR’s leader at the time was ayatollah Abbas Vaez Tabasi, who was appointed custodian of the foundation , Ruhollah Khomeini, and served from the 1979 revolution until his death in 2016.