Mohammed Rahim Motaghi Irvani

Mohammed Rahim Motaghi Irvani was an Iranian industrialist who founded the Melli Industrial Group in 1949. The 1992 Senate subcommittee report on BCCI names him as BCCI's lead front man in the unsuccessful 1978 bid for Financial General Bankshares and as the principal partner and financier of former CIA director Richard Helms in the consulting firm Safeer.¹

Melli Industrial Group and Alwand

Irvani founded the Melli Industrial Group in Iran in 1949 to manufacture footwear and leather goods and developed close ties to the government of the Shah of Iran. By 1978 the group owned 23 operating companies and had joint ventures with foreign firms including Goodyear and United Chemical. He also owned the Alwand Industrial Co., which held interests in the Iran Arab Bank. Financial documents estimated his personal net worth at over 50 million dollars and the value of his business holdings at as much as 800 million dollars.¹ Agha Hasan Abedi's involvement with Irvani arose from the Iran Arab Bank, according to a memorandum of BCCI's lawyers recording a November 1990 meeting with Roy P. M. Carlson. Carlson, who had advised Abedi on the formation of BCCI in 1972 while at Bank of America, was introduced by Abedi to Irvani and hired by him to manage the Melli group.¹²

Safeer and Richard Helms

Richard Helms was dismissed as director of central intelligence by President Richard Nixon in February 1973 and was ambassador to Iran until 1977, where he met Irvani. On October 31, 1977 Helms pleaded no contest to two charges in return for a recommendation that he not be sentenced to prison. In the fall of 1977 Clark Clifford visited a senior Justice Department official to argue against an indictment of Helms, saying that such charges could damage the intelligence community. The federal judge in the case described Helms as "in disgrace and shame."¹

Irvani financed Safeer, an international consulting firm named for the Iranian word for "Ambassador," whose initial business was mostly supplied by Irvani and his contacts. Safeer corporate records and documents filed in civil litigation, G&H Montage GmbH v. Irvani, Superior Court of Gwinnett County, Georgia, No. 88-A-03571-6, show that Irvani capitalized and owned 80 percent of the company. Carlson, Irvani's former chief U.S. assistant, became its vice president and handled much of its early business. A company named North West Investment, created by Carlson, invested 120,000 dollars in Safeer in its first year and a year later sold its shares to Brockton Leather Company, which sold them to Helms for one dollar.¹

The report records that Helms introduced Irvani to Walter J. Stoessel, Jr., the United States ambassador to Germany, in January 1979; wrote to Vice President George H. W. Bush on Irvani's behalf on October 29, 1987, forwarding a letter from Irvani; and forwarded Irvani's letters of congratulations to President-elect Bush and Secretary of State James Baker on November 28, 1988. The Irvani letters to Bush have not been located; Irvani's cover letter to Helms refers to his wish to give Bush advice on his presidential campaign. Helms also introduced a member of Irvani's family to Ambassador Paul Nitze and another to Raymond Close, a former CIA station chief for Saudi Arabia who had worked for Kamal Adham.¹

Financial General Bankshares, 1978

Abedi solicited Irvani in early 1978 to serve as a nominee shareholder in the takeover of Financial General Bankshares, together with Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Abdullah Darwaish. Irvani was listed in the original SEC filing in the 1978 takeover attempt as a 5 percent shareholder of Credit and Commerce American Holdings (CCAH). The report states that several documents introduced in the Georgia civil litigation describe his recruitment by Abedi.³ The BCCI lawyers' memorandum quotes Carlson as saying that Abedi had invited Irvani in the mid-1970s to take a 5 percent stake, that Irvani had applied to Credit and Commerce America for a loan to buy the stake, and that he "had never been keen to make the investment at all" but had been persuaded he could do so on the basis of a loan to be made to him.¹

Irvani's son told the Atlanta Constitution in 1992 that his father "lent his name to the 1978 takeover bid at the request of BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi."⁴ Helms denied the allegation in the Atlanta Constitution on February 18, 1992, calling it "totally untrue . . . absolute nonsense."⁵

An October 20, 1978 telex from Helms to Irvani, quoted in the report, states that Carlson had asked on October 19 that Helms have an independent attorney review seven documents he had telexed, and sets out the text of a letter agreement under which the undersigned would "indemnify you from any liability, loss, or damage" arising from Irvani's granting a power of attorney to any partner of the Washington law firm Clifford, Glass, McIlwain and Finney in the Financial General transaction. The report states that Robert Altman listed Irvani, within days of the telex, as an intended principal shareholder in the application filed with the Federal Reserve for CCAH, along with representatives of the Abu Dhabi royal family and Faisal Saud al-Fulaij. It states that Clifford and Altman received Irvani's power of attorney in the same period.¹⁶

The report states that Irvani's role in the first bid ended with the Iranian revolution in January 1979, when he became an unnecessary nominee, and that Kamal Adham succeeded him as BCCI's lead front man in the First American takeover.¹ The report's executive summary lists the relationships among former CIA personnel and the BCCI front men and nominees Adham, Abdul Khalil and Irvani as requiring further investigation.⁷

BCCI financing and the National Bank of Georgia

BCCI documents show that the bank financed Irvani investments in the United Kingdom and the United States, which in 1989 amounted to 38 million dollars in a single transaction to buy a New York office building at 140 East 58th Street. The documents also show loans, typically of millions of dollars at a time, to the Irvani family, and that the family received substantial loans from the National Bank of Georgia, both while Ghaith R. Pharaon owned it on behalf of BCCI and after First American Bankshares replaced him as nominal owner. After Pharaon bought the bank from Bert Lance, Abedi personally selected Carlson as its head.¹⁸