Will PAAIA stand up for our community?

Balatarin
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Will PAAIA stand up for our community?
by veronica3000
16-Sep-2009
 

What does an Iranian-American group founded to improve the image of Iranian-Americans do when its founding member is jailed for a $74million bank fraud? Does it issue a statement distancing itself from its criminal founder, in order to save the grace of the Iranian-American community? Does it go on offense to ensure that the act of an individual does not tarnish the image of an entire community?

No. It stays silent and issues a newsletter about an Iranian-American running for City Council in Atlanta, GA, while quietly removing the criminal’s name from its website.

Am I making this story up? I wish. This is the story of the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans /IAPAC and one of its founding members, New York finance man Hassan Nemazee.

On August 25, 2009, the co-founder of PAAIA/IAPAC was arrested and jailed over charges of bank fraud. He had sought to defraud CitiBank by using "fraudulent and forged" documents to get a $74 million business loan. Today, Nemazee sits in his apartment in New York wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet awaiting jail.

Nemazee is no ordinary Iranian-American. He was the co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s finance committee, raising millions of dollars for Democratic politicians, including President Clinton and President Obama.

Some of that money was raised from the Iranian-American community via PAAIA/IAPAC. Politicians in Washington have all either returned the money to PAAIA or donated it to charity. It has become a major embarrassment as politicians are doing all they can to disassociate themselves from Nemazee and his organization, PAAIA.

For Iranian-Americans, this has been a disaster. Nemazee worked overtime to make PAAIA/IAPAC the premier Iranian Americans political group. When his two organizations merged, he stated the following:

“This merger represents the logical next step in the political maturation of the Iranian American community,” added IAPAC Board Member and founding Trustee Hassan Nemazee. “As PAAIA’s affiliated PAC, we will be able to maximize the use of PAC contributions for electioneering purposes.”

While IAPAC focused on donating funds to politicians in the name of Iranian Americans, PAAIA focused on improving the image of Iranian Americans. Thanks to Hassan Namazee and the feeble reaction of PAAIA, however, the image of Iranian Americans has been shattered and their political stock destroyed.

This raises the question of what use an organization is aimed at improving our image, if it not only doesn’t do that, but actually does the opposite through the disgraceful acts of its founder? If PAAIA at least had made a statement, perhaps something could have been salvaged. Instead, it shamefully hid its head in the sand hoping that no one would notice.

(One has to ask oneself what that calculation was based on – Nemazee’s arrest was breaking news and covered by all major channels and newspapers. Clearly competence is not PAAIA’s strength, which may be why its Executive Director was let go only a year or so after joining the start-up).

I was waiting to see PAAIA’s reaction for several days. But there was complete silence. A journalist friend called to get a comment from them on the matter, but they hung up the phone on her.

Instead, a few days letter, on August 28, they issued a newsletter. The top story was that an Iranian-American was running for city council in Atlanta. No mention of Nemazee and his crime and embarrassment of the Iranian-American community.

I was stunned. I had already lost some faith in the organization when they refused to speak up forcefully in favor of the Iranian people during the election disaster in Iran. But that was Iran, and PAAIA was an Iranian-American organization, they explained. Ok, fair enough. Selfish and cowardly, but ok.

But with Nemazee, they had no excuse. This wasn’t about Iran. This was about an Iranian-American. And not just any Iranian-American – this was about PAAIA/IAPAC’s own founder.

There is already a widespread perception in the community, particularly in California, that PAAIA doesn’t serve the Iranian-American community, but its own Board members. PAAIA is a platform for rich Iranian-Americans to promote themselves and get free PR. It’s not the community that matters, but the rich people funding PAAIA.

True or not, PAAIA’s shameful silence and refusal to come to the aid of the Iranian-American community when Nemazee tarnished our image raises the question of where its loyalty is – with the community or with its wealthy funders.

If PAAIA wants to prove that it serves all of us in the community, not only should it come out and distance itself from Nemazee, they should condemn the criminal act he committed. To show that in Iranian-American community, we do not accept this type of behavior.

If PAAIA doesn’t know how to do this, it can either study the Jewish community who blasted the hell out of Bernie Maddoff to leave no doubt about their disapproval of his heinous crime, or they can close shop and stop pretending they care about the Iranian-American community.

Balatarin
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PAAIA

RE: Nemazee article seems inaccessible from PAAIA home page

by PAAIA on Fri Sep 18, 2009 04:06 PM PDT

The articles on the main page are bumped off after a week or two as new articles are published.  As such, the statement had been bumped as of last night, but has since been moved back to the main page where you will be able to find it. 

Concerning the search function not locating the statement, this is the explanation provided by our web host:

“The search index runs every night.  This page was fine yesterday but a mysql error occurred last night that affected this page for the search.  So just a blip in the index and should fix itself tonight.” 

I hope you will find the foregoing helpful.

PAAIA

www.paaia.org


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Ari Siletz

Nemazee article seems inaccessible from PAAIA home page

by Ari Siletz on Thu Sep 17, 2009 10:36 PM PDT

Babak Hoghooghi,

The link you have provided in your comment goes directly to a statement about Mr. Nemazee resigning from IAPAC's board. However I was not able to access this article from anywhere else on the website. The link address shows the resignation statement as being appended to the website outside the normal site map structure, without tab access.

 

Moreover, using the PAAIA website's search utility, only three articles show up under "Nemazee," none of which are the article you have linked to in your comment. The site's search utility seems unaware of the existence of this page. Would you kindly list the tab clicks which allow access to this article from the PAAIA home page? I thank you in advance for your time. 


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PAAIA

PAAIA has and will continue to stand up for the IA Community

by PAAIA on Thu Sep 17, 2009 08:34 PM PDT

PAAIA has and will continue to stand up for the Iranian American community 

We at PAAIA appreciate the concern expressed by “veronica” about the image of Iranian Americans in the face of legal charges filed against Mr. Nemazee. We write, however, to correct a number of factual inaccuracies included in the article. We firmly believe in the necessity and importance of integrity and accuracy in our public discourse, wish to believe that the inaccuracies in the article are inadvertent, and invite the author and other members of our community to join forces with PAAIA and other Iranian American civic organizations in continuing to stand up for our community.  

On September first, PAAIA/IAPAC did in fact issue a statement in the face of legal charges filed against Mr. Nemazee (a copy of the statement can be found on our website //www.paaia.org/cs/mr_hassan_nemazee_resigns_from_iapacs_board_of_directors).  As the statement indicates, Mr. Nemazee resigned from IAPAC’s Board of Directors as of September 1st, and his 2009 contribution to IAPAC is being donated to charity.  Furthermore, IAPAC’s Bylaws (//www.iranianamericanpac.org/about/ByLaws.shtml) includes a customary prophylactic ethics clause pursuant to which any member of the organization’s Board of Directors who is charged with a felony is automatically suspended from the Board.  It should finally be noted that Mr. Nemazee was not a founding member or a Director of PAAIA, and only one of fifteen founding Trustees of IAPAC. 

The author’s suggestion that PAAIA only serves the interests of a few of its financial supporters is also mistaken. Only sixteen months after its public launch, PAAIA has more than 2,000 members from all walks of life throughout the United States.  More importantly, the current members of the Board of Directors of PAAIA were directly elected by the membership at large in December of 2008 (Please click here (//www.paaia.org/cs/board_of_directors for the list of Board members).  An independent accounting firm certified the election results, for a copy of which please click here (//paaia.org/galleries/new-gallery/2008%20Election%20Results%20111.pdf).   

Three other factual inaccuracies also deserve correction.  First, PAAIA did in fact speak up in support of the people of Iran in the aftermath of the June 12th presidential election (please see (//www.paaia.org/cs/perspectives_on_postelection_developments_in_iran). Second, no politician has returned any contribution made to him or her by IAPAC since legal charges were filed against Mr. Nemazee.  Finally, consistent with the time commitment I had made when I joined PAAIA as Executive Director, I am stepping down from that role at the end of this year and after having served in such capacity for about two and half years. By the invitation of the Board of Directors, I look forward to continuing to serve the organization and our community as a regular board member beginning in 2010.   

We invite and welcome all Iranian Americans – including the author and others who have commented on these pages - to become better informed about PAAIA and IAPAC (//www.paaia.org), and to join us ( https://paaia.browserams.com/members/new/51) in our collective quest to ensure that our community realizes its full potential for the benefit of all of us, particularly our children. 

Babak Hoghooghi

Executive Director

PAAIA


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che khabar e

we all have crooks among us...

by che khabar e on Thu Sep 17, 2009 01:08 PM PDT

but your point is well taken.  PAAIA should have denounced his crimes.  It leads to distrust of the group itself but not, I hope, Iranians themselves.  Fair minded people will accept the fact that there are always a few rotten apples in ANY group of people.  We on iranian.com should know that.  :-)


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Ostaad

Great legit criticism of this group.

by Ostaad on Thu Sep 17, 2009 10:24 AM PDT

I hope you get a clear response from them as to where they stand when it comes to crooks among them. Obviously sweeping these shenanigans under the "farsh" is not the way to go.


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Anonymouse

PAAIA knows better. We're just 'dumb masses' in their eyes.

by Anonymouse on Thu Sep 17, 2009 06:35 AM PDT

Everything is sacred.


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kargar

thumbs up girl

by kargar on Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:09 PM PDT

very well said


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