LONDON (Evening Standard) — Conservative Party donor Javad Marandi was revealed today as a key figure linked to a major money laundering operation targeted by the National Crime Agency.
A court ruling said that bank records showed that Javad Marandi, who has been on a Conservative advisory board of ultra-wealthy supporters, either owned or was connected to companies involved in a “criminal enterprise” moving vast sums of illicit funds around the world.
The judgment states that he received $49 million directly from the bank account of one of the companies used “to launder the proceeds of crime” as part of the scheme — known as the “Azerbaijani laundromat” — and that one of the companies owned by Marandi received a further $107 million from the same account.
It also shows that Marandi was a conduit for dirty money channeled to an oligarch’s son in London.
Marandi, who is one of London’s most successful tycoons and has a home on Belgravia’s Eaton Square, has strongly denied any wrongdoing and had managed to keep his connection to the money laundering case secret through an anonymity order imposed by a court in 2021.
He had claimed that revealing his name would inflict “catastrophic” damage on him and his businesses, which in this country also include the Emilia Wickstead fashion brand and the Wed2B wedding outfit retailer.
