Early bedtime for Pilatus Bank owner Ali Sadr Hasheminejad under bail conditions

As part of his bail conditions, Pilatus Bank owner Ali Sadr Hasheminejad will be subject to electronic monitoring and a nightly curfew of 7pm.

He will have to surrender all passports, or any other travel documents, and will not be able to obtain new ones. Hasheminejad will need to waive any right to contest extradition from any foreign country.

The banker was arrested in March and charged with breaching sanctions on Iran, bank fraud, and money laundering. He was granted bail by a New York Court last week.

Indeed, his travel will be restricted to the southern and eastern districts of New York, the eastern district of Virginia, the district of Maryland, and the district of Columbia.

Hasheminejad will not be able to make any claim on funds held in his two frozen Cyprus-based bank accounts.

In fact, his defence counsel would not be able to direct any of his funds to anyone, and if Hasheminejad would flee, any funds not used for expenses would be deemed posted for bail.

Hasheminejad’s lawyers had presented a bail package of conditions and bonds that total some $34 million, which include almost 40 bonds from family, friends and colleagues worth almost $14 million.

If he were to break his bail conditions, Hasheminejad would be compromising eleven separate bonds of impressive value.

The bonds include what his lawyers referred to as “meaningful pledges” from close friends and family, arguing that by failing to appear in court, Hasheminejad would cause significant damage to himself and to those close to him.

The bail package was opposed by the US government’s district attorney Geoffrey Bearman, who accused him of having set up Pilatus bank in 2013 with “criminal proceeds” from the US dollar payments to Iranian beneficiaries.

Bearman also said that Hasheminejad’s wealth, which includes a $12.9 million equity in Pilatus, was ultimately forfeitable “because it constitutes criminal proceeds directly linked to the Venezuela project”.

Hasheminejad’s $1.5 million Washington D.C. apartment, as well as his $5.7 million California pistachio farms, were also forfeitable, Bearman said, as he claimed they were purchased with criminal proceeds.

Hasheminejad was arrested in Virginia as he returned to his Washington home, charged with bank fraud and breaching US sanctions against Iran.

The banker is accused of having funnelled some $115 million through the United States on behalf of Iranian entities, including his family’s company Stratus, from a Venezuelan construction project to companies in Switzerland and Turkey.

The Maltese financial regulator said it is carrying out an extensive review of the bank, which is still ongoing.

The bank is already the subject of at least two magisterial inquiries; one triggered by an allegation by the late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia that the bank processed a $1 million payment on behalf of the Azerbaijani ruling family, to the wife of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and the other by a complaint filed by the former PN leader Simon Busuttil on money paid to Muscat’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri.