A donor to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is the registered manager and shareholder of a Dubai-based company that previously had business ties to an Iranian conglomerate later placed under U.S. sanctions, according to a Financial Times report published Thursday. 

The FT reported that John Simpson, a church warden and conveyancer, is the registered manager and shareholder of Orico General Trading LLC in Dubai. Simpson is also listed publicly as the person with significant control of Interior Architecture Landscape Ltd, a UK company that donated 200,000 pounds to Reform UK last year and whose clients include Iranian billionaire Sasan Ghandehari and his family. 

According to the FT, French legal documents released last month described Orico as a subsidiary of Omran Razavi International Co., an Iranian company majority owned by the Astan Quds Razavi religious foundation. The newspaper said Astan Quds Razavi, or AQR, is a major financial conglomerate in Iran that was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2021 because of its influence over large parts of the Iranian economy and its ties to the country’s leadership. 

Orico was established in Dubai in June 2012 and, within months, agreed to supply Omran Razavi with goods and services. About a year later, it signed a €145 million deal as part of a contract with Iran’s state-owned Telecommunications Infrastructure Company, according to a 2020 arbitration request cited by the newspaper. 

Orico did not comment to the FT, but a person close to the company told the newspaper that Omran Razavi was a joint-venture vehicle between a foreign investor and AQR, and said Orico was privately owned and had never been a subsidiary of an Iranian regime entity. The same person said that after cleric Ebrahim Raisi took over AQR in 2016, assets belonging to Orico and Omran’s foreign investors were expropriated under a national security pretext. 

The link between Orico and Iran emerged in a ruling by France’s Conseil d’État, which upheld the withdrawal of refugee status from an unidentified man referred to as “Mr C”, according to the report. The man was alleged to have embezzled several million euros while serving in roles at AQR, Omran Razavi and Orico, though the person close to Orico denied he had worked for the company. 

The report also drew renewed scrutiny to Reform UK’s funding. The FT said Labour lawmaker Liam Byrne, who chairs the House of Commons business and trade select committee, asked Companies House in February to investigate the accuracy of Interior Architecture Landscape’s register. The company had 81,432 pounds in cash as of January 2025, but made seven donations to Reform between June and August 2025 totaling 200,000 pounds. 

Read more at the Financial Times