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![Reform's churchwarden riddle
Extract
A churchwarden from Potters Bar who works for the family of a highly secretive, Kazakhstan-born billionaire can be revealed as the man behind £200,000 of donations to Reform UK.
John Richard Simpson is a 59-year-old conveyancer whose parish website describes him as an "experienced" and
"dedicated" Anglican lay leader.
He is the owner of Interior
Architecture Landscape Limited, which made seven payments to Nigel Farage's party last summer. The firm, which was originally owned via a trust in the British Virgin Islands, is so small it does not have to file professionally audited accounts. It did not display any contact details until recently and was almost wound up by HMRC after a tax dispute last year.
Simpson, known locally as Bill, "does conveyancing, but is not a fully qualified solicitor", according to a Facebook post by a neighbour in the Hertfordshire town. There is no evidence he has any background in interior design. He has no known political affiliation or background in activism.
He would not discuss the source of the funds donated to Reform last week.
Simpson has long worked for Sasan and Yasmin Ghandehari, a married couple who a spokesman for the interior design company acknowledged were "clients".
Last month, the Ghandehari family office sponsored Farage's pass to Davos and a hotel in the Swiss resort for the World Economic Forum's annual gathering. They claimed to have retained the Reform leader as "an honorary and unpaid adviser" in an arrangement first reported by the Financial Times.
In response to inquiries, Farage's spokesman said: "[Sasan] Ghandehari has attended a Reform UK fundraising event and they are friends of the party." It is understood the event in question took place at Oswald's, a private members' club in Mavfair.
It is illegal for a foreign national or entity to donate directly to a party. Yet a trading British company is automatically eligible to donate.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:c4xtyto7nrklhfkroyrsce2w/bafkreidrxmr4miirybjl5wb5p7wwb5fuznljlajjckoz5bamxiqfhr4txa)
![Churchwarden with connection to Kazakh-born tycoon is behind £200k of donations to Reform
Extract:
They claimed to have retained the Reform leader as "an honorary and unpaid adviser", an arrangement first reported by the Financial Times.
In response to inquiries,
Farage's spokesman said: "[Sasan]
Ghandehari has attended a Reform UK fundraising event and they are friends of the party." It is understood the event took place at Oswald's, a private members' club in Mayfair.
It is illegal for a foreign national or entity to donate directly to a party. Yet a trading British company is automatically eligible to donate. There is nothing to
stop a foreign investor or owner depositing funds in a UK company which in turn donates to a political party.
Sasan and Yasmin Ghandehari have been described as "Iranian-born" and
"British" in media reports but it is unclear whether they hold British citizenship.
Sasan gave his nationality as Iranian and his profession as "businessman" in a
Companies
House document dated
2002.
The Ghandeharis are prolific art collectors and sit on a fundraising committee for the Tate. They derive their wealth from Sasan's mother, Hourieh Peramaa, who was born in Kazakhstan and fled to Iran as a child before investing in property and becoming a billionaire.
Named by Chatham House as a "politi-
cally exposed" or
"high-risk"
person
from a post-Soviet state, she is so secretive that there is almost no verifiable information about her and it is not
known if she is still alive. She would be 97 if so.
The family faced controversy in 2008, when the former head of Kazakhstan's intelligence services claimed they had bought Royal Mansion, a £50 million home in The Bishops Avenue, London — known as "billionaires' row"
- for Nursultan Nazarbayev, then the dictator of the oil and gas-rich state.
Sasan Ghandehari denied this was the case. However, he acknowledged having a personal relationship with the ruler.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:c4xtyto7nrklhfkroyrsce2w/bafkreigm4z3bim57cdqewaytq4af62njzxffjb7ay7joxtueuzgmp7xjou)
