Tehran Airline

Formerly known as Safat Airline, this airline is also a subsidiary of the Ahrar Markazi Institute. It operated both passenger and cloud-seeding flights but lost its permit in 2013. The company still exists and changed its name from Safat to Tehran Airline in April 2018. In 2006, Yaser Hashemi was the board chairman of Safat Airline.

Massoud Khalili

Board member of Raha Mehr Vatan Charity who was also one of the founders of Iranian Equestrian Industry Co. and represented the interests of the Equestrian Federation of Iran on its board of directors.

Yaser Hashemi

The youngest son of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, age 50, married to Maryam Salari. They have one daughter, Leili, who is married to Mohammad Mahdi Sanei Taheri.

Yaser was one of his father’s chiefs of staff at the Expediency Council. After Rafsanjani’s death, Yaser’s office was sealed shut and he was effectively purged from the EC. Yaser was reportedly also chief of staff of Azad University’s board of trustees. Rafsanjani’s archived website states that Yaser was once in the business of cheese imports.

According to a 2003 article in Forbes, “Yaser owns a 30-acre horse farm in the super fashionable Lavasan neighborhood of north Tehran, where land goes for over $4 million an acre. Just where did Yaser get his money? A Belgian-educated businessman, he runs a large export-import firm that includes baby food, bottled water and industrial machinery.”

Leili Hashemi

Daughter of Yaser Hashemi and board member of Raha Mehr Vatan Charity.

Mahmoud Salari

  Connections Our Coverage The Rafsanjani Children, Part 2: Yaser Hashemi Other Links

Massoud Khalili

Board member of Raha Mehr Vatan Charity and one of the founders of Iranian Equestrian Industry Co.

Mahmoud Yazdi

Long-time business partner involved in various Yaser Hashemi/Maryam Salari companies. Yazdi is the treasurer of Raha Mehr Vatan Charity and the vice chairman of another company called Paranedeh Sefid Kahkeshan, which “obtains visas, operates domestic and international tours,” and engages in “travel ticket sales, hotel reservations, and any other activity directly or indirectly related to passenger transportation.”

Davoud Soleimani

Inspector for Raha Mehr Vatan Charity. Soleimani is connected to various other businesses linked to Yaser Hashemi’s family. He is also the CEO of a travel agency called Shajareh Taneem that operates Haj tours.

Soraya Marashi

Relative of Yaser Hashemi and Alternate inspector for Raha Mehr Vatan Charity.

Sanati Tolidi Moratab

Established on October 7, 1957, Sanati Tolidi Moratab was the official dealer of Land Rovers in Iran and later launched an assembly line to produce the car in the country. The company was nationalized after the 1979 Revolution. Approximately 62 percent of the company’s shares are now owned by Ahrar Markazi Institute, which was established on January 23, 1994, to financially empower former POWs and war veterans, who are also its shareholders. Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) serve as the institute’s executives. In addition to Sanati Tolidi Moratab and other companies, Ahrar owns various properties and land across the country.

On November 29, 2014, a meeting of Ahrar shareholders and the board of directors led to a group of shareholders airing their grievances to the media. By their account, Ahrar was operating without any supervision from Bonyad Shahid, the para-governmental foundation that is supposed to exercise oversight over veterans’ affairs. Shareholders, they asserted, were kept in the dark about the way the institute was run, its subsidiaries, and its finances, and they had yet to receive their requisite dividends. On February 13, 2015, Ahrar’s shareholders finally lodged a complaint with the General Inspection Organization of Iran (GIO). No updates regarding this complaint have been released.

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