TORY DONOR'S LINKS TO 'DIRTY MONEY' PROBE

>>STANDARD IN LEGAL FIGHT TO REVEAL CASE >> MULTI-MILLIONAIRE DENIES WRONGDOING

- Martin Bentham

A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE Tory donor who owns London’s famous Conran Shop and a stake in the Anya Hindmarch handbag retailer was revealed today as a key figure linked to a major money laundering operation targeted by the National Crime Agency.

A court ruling said that bank records showed that Javad Marandi, who has been on a Conservative advisory board of ultra-wealthy supporters, either owned or was connected to companies involved in a “criminal enterprise” moving vast sums of illicit funds around the world and into this country.

The judgment states that he received $49 million directly from the bank account of one of the companies used “to launder the proceeds of crime” as part of the scheme — known as the “Azerbaijan laundromat” — and that one of the companies owned by Mr Marandi received a further $107 million from the same account. It also shows that Mr Marandi was a conduit for dirty money chanelled to an oligarch’s son in London.

Mr Marandi, who has a home in Belgravia with his wife Narmina, has strongly denied any wrongdoing and had kept his connection to the money laundering case secret through an anonymity order imposed by a court in 2021.