(Clarion) The Alavi Foundation is an Iranian front group that funds mosques and educational institutions in the U.S. and Canada.
In 2009, federal prosecutors charged that the Alavi Foundation was a front group for the Iranian government and violated U.S. law by transferring rental income from its properties to Iran’s Bank Melli, which was sanctioned in 2007 for supporting the Iranian nuclear program.
Those properties included a 36-story office building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan worth $1 billion owned by the Alavi Foundation along with the Assa Corporation. Other properties included Islamic centers comprising schools and mosques in New York City, Maryland, California, Texas and Virginia.
A suit was later brought against the Alavi Foundation and the Assa Corporation by survivors of Iranian-regime terror attacks.
