Former Pilatus Bank chair Ali Sadr Hasheminejad goes on trial in New York on Monday.

The trial was cleared to proceed after a large number of defence motions seeking to stop the introduction of information seen as prejudicial to Hasheminejad were dismissed by the federal court.

Hasheminejad was arrested in February 2018 and charged with participating in a scheme to evade US sanctions and funnel more than $115 million paid under a Venezuelan construction contract through the US financial system.
 
Hasheminejad faces 125 years in jail if found guilty of the charges, which he denies.

The court ruled in its preliminary decision that statements of co-conspirators and most e-mails will be admissible in the trial.

Times of Malta reported in March last year that US prosecutors while silently building the money-laundering case, were granted a warrant to search his e-mails in April 2014, at a time when Pilatus Bank was in the process of obtaining a category two investment licence from Malta’s financial services watchdog.

Pilatus Bank’s licence was revoked by the European Central Bank in November 2018, two years after it was first implicated in alleged money laundering breaches.

The bank had been at the centre of political controversy ever since a series of leaked financial intelligence reports flagged evidence of money-laundering and serious compliance shortcomings back in 2016.

It had also been alleged that the bank was used as a conduit for Azerbaijani millions making their way into Europe, while it was linked to allegations that former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s wife, Michelle, secretly received graft payments, of which no evidence was found in a magisterial inquiry.