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:
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.
