April 15, 2016
One Iranian-American name has so far cropped up in the Panama Papers, the immense leak of legal papers from a Panamanian law firm that is alleged to have been used by many people to hide their wealth from tax collectors.
That name is Farhad Azima, 74, who founded and runs Aviation Leasing Group, a firm based in Kansas City, Missouri, that owns dozens of aircraft that are leased to airlines, corporations and governments.
Azima has been linked in news reports over the years to assorted scandals, with allegations his firm has been involved in gun and drug running, and illegal Iranian arms shipments. His name also came up in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. But he has never been charged with anything illegal by the United States or other governments.
Azima was born in 1941 and moved to the United States as a student in 1962. In 1967, he married Lynda Hutchison and they have two adult daughters, Leila and Jenny.
This week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) found his name in the Panama Papers, which are about 11 million pages of documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and being investigated by a group led by the ICIJ.
The ICIJ report says little about Azima’s business with Mossack Fonseca, and instead concentrates on the rumors about Azima’s ties to the CIA and contributions Azima has made to the political campaigns of Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Presidential Library and the Democratic Party.
It says Azima went to the White House 10 times during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
When Hillary Clinton was mounting her Senate campaign, Azima “in December 1999, hosted her and 40 guests for a private dinner that raised $2,500 a head,” the ICIJ report says.
According to a list of donors released by former President Clinton in December 2008, Azima gave a donation from $50,001 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
In 1997, Azima gave $143,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which the DNC at first turned down because of the Iran-Contra allegation, but ultimately accepted, according to The New York Times.
The public records of the Federal Elections Commission show Azima gave Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign $2,300 in November 2007. Once Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee, Azima gave Obama’s Victory Fund a total of $30,800 in October 2008.
ICIJ notes that Azima’s aircraft leasing firm gave him access to a Boeing 707 cargo jet, which he allegedly lent to the CIA to send weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras. It reports that Azima denies that.
“[I was] investigated by every known agency in the US and they decided there was absolutely nothing there,” Azima told ICIJ. He said the whole investigation into his Iran-Contra involvement “was a wild goose chase. The law enforcement and regulators fell for it.”
ICIJ says Azima has ties to Iranian national Houshang Hosseinpour, an accused sanctions violator.
The Panama Papers show that Azima and Hosseinpour appeared on corporate documents of a company that planned to buy a hotel in the Republic of Georgia in 2011. That was the same year US Treasury officials asserted that Hosseinpour, who co-founded the private airline FlyGeorgia, and two others—not including Azima—first began to send millions of dollars into Iran, which led to sanctions being taken against him three years later.
The ICIJ article is filled with hearsay and rumor, but no substance about any wrongdoings by Azima. Although the heart of the ICIJ series is about allegations that Mossack Fonseca helped people to set up offshore companies for purposes of tax evasion, there is nothing published about Azima and evaded taxes.
