suit seeks to revoke the Alavi Foundation and the Assa Corporation’s ownership of a 36-storey building at 650 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The original lawsuit filed in December only sought Assa Corp.’s building share.
Prosecutors said both companies were sending money to Bank Melli, owned by the Iranian government. The U.S. Treasury has designated the bank as a weapons proliferator and banned U.S. citizens from dealing with it.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AB5CH20091112
Writing at Forbes.com, Rachel Ehrenfeld this week reported that this group, which supports Iranian causes, gave the Clinton foundation between $25,000 and $50,000 on Dec. 19, 2008 — the very day the Alavi Foundation’s president, Farshid Jahedi, was indicted on federal charges related to a probe of the foundation’s relationship with Iran’s Bank Melli. (The donation, according to Ehrenfeld’s report, also came two days after the U.S. Treasury Department designated Alavi’s partner, the New York-based ASSA Corp., as a terrorist entity.) Both the Alavi Foundation and Bank Melli, Ehrenfeld reported, have been “recognized as procurement fronts for Iran’s nuclear program,” with Bank Melli being designated in 2007 as a terrorist entity.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/01/rubber_stamp_for_hillary.html
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www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org Date: 11/12/2009 8:15:29 PM
ALAVI FOUNDATION (AF)
500 Fifth Ave. Suite 2320
New York, NY
10110
Phone :212-944-8333
URL :http://www.alavifoundation.org
FBI official calls it a “front organization for the Iranian regime,” which is hostile to the United States
A not-for-profit organization formed in New York State in 1973, the Alavi Foundation was originally set up by the former Shah of Iran's government to promote Iranian language and culture in the United States. With the fall of the Shah, the multi-million-dollar building where the Alavi Foundation has its offices became the property of the Mostazafan Foundation, a non-profit which was established by the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary Islamic government in Iran.
The Alavi Foundation claims that its goals are to “promote understanding and harmony among people of different religions”; “promote the study of the humanities, arts, and pure and applied sciences”; “giv[e] assistance to public charitable organizations during times of hardship and deprivation caused by war or natural disasters”; and “provid[e] financial assistance to not-for-profit organizations that are involved in the teaching of Islamic culture and the Persian language.”
The Alavi Foundation owns numerous properties in the United States, including a 36-story New York City office complex worth an estimated $135 million; 20 acres of prime development land in Catharpin, Virginia; and four "Islamic Education Centers" in Potomac (Maryland), Queens (New York), Houston (Texas), and Carmichael (California).
The Potomac location serves some 1,500 Muslim families and was directed for 14 years by Islamic cleric Mohammad Asi, who called the 9/11 attacks "a grand strike against New York and Washington" launched by "Israeli Zionist Jews" who had advised the 5,000 Jews employed at the World Trade Center to skip work on that fateful day. Asi has also praised and supported the activities of Hezbollah, which is an arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
Former FBI official Oliver Revell has stated that the Alavi Foundation is "a front organization for the Iranian regime that is engaged in covert intelligence activity on the part of a hostile foreign government." That intelligence consists, in part, of monitoring Iranian dissidents in the U.S. by means of technological espionage. David Cohen of the New York Police Department intelligence division says the Alavi Foundation is "totally controlled by the government of Iran" and "funds a variety of anti-American causes" including the Potomac Center and other mosques. U.S. intelligence officials characterize Alavi as a vehicle through which the Iranian regime “keeps tabs on Iranians [in the United States], obtains data about U.S. technology, promotes Tehran's views on world affairs, provides gathering places for pro-Iran activists, and channels money to U.S. academics to gain a friendly reading on Iran.”