Alavi Foundation boss gets just 3 months in jail.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Farshid Jahedi, former president of the Islamic Republic's Alavi Foundation in New York City, was sentenced to just three months in prison last Thursday after pleading guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice.

Jahedi pleaded guilty to the charges last December in a plea agreement that accepted a sentence of one year to 18 months. But Judge Shira Scheindlin sentenced him to just three months behind bars plus a fine of $3,000, a very modest sentence.

Jahedi was president of the Alavi Foundation in New York--the revolutionary successor to the Shah's Pahlavi Foundation--when the U.S. government began investigating its ties to the Iranian government. The Foundation claimed to be independent of the government.

On December 17, 2008, Jahedi was served with a federal grandjury subpoena that directed him to produce financial documents on the foundation's dealings with the Iranian government.

The next evening, FBI agents trailed him as he drove home and watched as he parked his car near his residence, got out and walked away from his residence toward a neighborhood trash can, looked around, dropped torn papers in the trash can, then turned around and walked to his residence.

The FBI retrieved the torn papers, assembled them and found they were documents the subpoena had commanded Jahedi to turn over.

In court last week, Jahedi, 55, pleaded with the judge for probation. Jahedi was apologetic. "I want to show everybody that I regret my action. I want to show my children not to be disappointed in their father," he told the court.

Judge Scheindlin said, "There is a need for a period of incarceration. Obstruction of justice affects the integrity of the entire justice system."

The Jahedi case was a criminal case separate from the government's civil action to seize the assets of the Alavi Foundation, including its 36-story Manhattan office building at 650 Fifth Avenue and properties in New York, Maryland, Virginia, Texas and California. Several of the properties are home to Shia mosques. The mosques were not owned by Alavi, but paid rent to Alavi. Their landlord is now the U.S. government.

Article Details

Printer friendly Cite/link Email Feedback
Title Annotation:	Diaspora: Around the globe
Publication:	Iran Times International (Washington, DC)
Date:	May 7, 2010
Words:	353
Previous Article:	Navy saves three ships from piracy.
Next Article:	Novelist honored by Brown Univ.