The Ahsani family are a prominent

Monaco Monaco (; ), officially the Principality of Monaco (french: Principauté de Monaco; Ligurian: ; oc, Principat de Mónegue), is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Italian region of Lig ...

-based business family of

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

ian origin. The family is headed by Ata Ahsani. Ata and his two sons Cyrus and Saman run the energy industry consultancy

Unaoil Unaoil is a Monaco based company which provides "industrial solutions to the energy sector in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa." Unaoil is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven with an opaque banking system. History The ...

; his third son, Sassan, heads the British property company Lumina Real Estate Capital. The Aria Trust is the

family trust A discretionary trust, in the trust law of England, Australia, Canada and other common law jurisdictions, is a trust where the beneficiaries and/or their entitlements to the trust fund are not fixed, but are determined by the criteria set out in t ...

of the Ahsani family. In 2007 the trust held €63 million in bank accounts and private equity with its international property holdings in Monaco,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

having an estimated value of €130 million. The Ahsani family have a charitable organisation, Unakids. The Ahsani family control

shell companies A shell corporation is a company or corporation that exists only on paper and has no office and no employees, but may have a bank account or may hold passive investments or be the registered owner of assets, such as intellectual property, or s ...

in the tax havens of the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

, the

Marshall Islands The Marshall Islands ( mh, Ṃajeḷ), officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands ( mh, Aolepān Aorōkin Ṃajeḷ),'' () is an independent island country and microstate near the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the Internati ...

, and the

British Virgin Islands ) , anthem = "God Save the King" , song_type = Territorial song , song = "Oh, Beautiful Virgin Islands" , image_map = File:British Virgin Islands on the globe (Americas centered).svg , map_caption = , mapsize = 290px , image_map2 = Brit ...

, through which Unaoil's business is conducted. In March 2016 ''

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

'' described Unaoil as "the unseen intermediary in massive deals between the world's biggest energy companies and notoriously corrupt governments in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa." The family’s portfolio of real estate includes German nursing homes, and properties in multiple countries. On 31 October 2019, Cyrus and Saman Ahsani pleaded guilty to conspiring to facilitate bribes on behalf of multinational firms to secure oil and gas contracts. They laundered money in order to conceal the bribes and caused the destruction of evidence to obstruct investigators in the US and elsewhere, according to US prosecutors.

Family members

Ata Ahsani was born in 1940 in

Kerman Kerman ( fa, كرمان, Kermân ; also romanization of Persian, romanized as Kermun and Karmana), known in ancient times as the satrapy of Carmania, is the capital city of Kerman Province, Iran. At the 2011 census, its population was 821,394, in ...

, Iran, and later studied engineering in England and the United States before working for an oil company in Iran. Ata Ahsani left Iran for the United Kingdom in the wake of the 1979

Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...

, and established Unaoil in 1990. Cyrus Ahsani is Ata Ahsani’s oldest son. He is the treasurer of Monaco's Ambassador's Club, the club is headed by

Prince Albert II of Monaco Albert II – Website of the Palace of Monaco (Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi; born 14 March 1958) is Prince of Monaco, since 2005. Albert was born at the Prince's Palace of Monaco, and he is the second child and only son of Prince Rai ...

. Saman Ahsani was born in December 1973. He was formerly a Trustee of the

Iran Heritage Foundation The Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF) is a United Kingdom–registered charity was founded in 1995 in London. The mission is to promote and preserve the history, languages and cultures of Iran and the Persianate world, covering all periods of Iran ...

. Ata Ahsani's third son, Sassan Ahsani (born January 1978), is based in London and is the head of Lumina Real Estate Capital, a property investment company. Ata Ahsani was a shareholder in Lumina between 2012 and 2016.

Bribery scandal

Cyrus and Saman Ahsani pled guilty on March 25, 2019 to conspiring to facilitate bribes on behalf of multinational firms to secure oil and gas contracts. Hundreds of thousands of emails sent within Unaoil and between members of the Ahsani family from 2001 to 2012 were leaked to investigative journalists and formed the basis for a series of reports in

Fairfax Media Fairfax Media was a media company in Australia and New Zealand, with investments in newspaper, magazines, radio and digital properties. The company was founded by John Fairfax as John Fairfax and Sons, who purchased ''The Sydney Morning Herald' ...

's ''

'' and

Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper i ...

newspapers and the ''

Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

'' in March 2016. From approximately 1999 to 2016, the Ahsanis conspired with others, including multiple companies and individuals, to make millions of dollars in bribe payments to government officials in Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya and Syria, according to US prosecutors.

References

External links

Ahsani – Unaoil profile
{Dead link, date=October 2018 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes
Unakids
Monegasque families Business families Iranian philanthropists Iranian businesspeople Iranian emigrants to Monaco