SPINWATCH EXCLUSIVE: The Clinton Foundation has long been Hillary's Achilles heel on the campaign trail for US president. Michael Gillard reveals why the FBI is probing a major donor with western friends and eastern enemies.

THE US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reviewing claims that a major political donor to Hillary Clinton paid a $500,000 bribe to a foreign government official as part of a property deal with suspected Iranian sanction busters.

Farhad Azima, an Iranian-born aviation millionaire, who gave between $250,000 and £500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, is also facing a potential legal battle in London’s High Court connected to the alleged bribe.

The revelations follow last week’s third and final presidential debate in which Republican candidate Donald Trump called the Clinton Foundation 'a criminal enterprise' and pay-to-play body that allegedly sells insider access in return for donations.

Azima, 74, denies any wrongdoing and has indicated that he will defend the UK claim. He is countersuing his accusers in the US alleging he is the victim of an extortion attempt and dirty tricks campaign, which includes the hacking of his personal emails.

The US businessman, who is believed to have connections to the CIA, has donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign to become a senator in 2000 and her presidential run in 2008. He also entertained the Clinton family at Goldeneye, the former Jamaican villa of James Bond novelist, Ian Fleming.

His Kansas City mansion has been used to host fundraisers, and his daughter, Cricket Azima, is close to Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longest serving aide.

The Sheikh, a hotel and a $500,000 payment

Details of the bribery allegations were submitted to the FBI office in Houston Texas on 6 October on behalf of Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al-Qasimi, the ruler of Ras Al Khaimah (RAK), one of the United Arab Emirates.

The FBI said that it was 'not permitted to confirm or deny the existence of investigations'.

The allegations are set out in documents lodged at the High Court on 30 September and revolve around the proposed sale of the Sheraton Hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia for $62.5m by the Ras al-Khaimah investment authority (Rakia) in 2011.

The legal papers claim that in return for introducing Rakia to three Iranian businessmen who wanted to buy the hotel, Khater Massaad, then chief executive of Rakia, agreed that Azima would receive a 5 per cent commission.

The papers further allege that $500,050 was transferred to Massaad’s private HSBC account in Geneva from the NatWest bank account in London of one of Azima’s companies – AAA Investments Limited – on 18 January 2012.

The legal claim says the transaction was 'a bribe or secret commission' for the referral.

The PR firms and dirty tricks

Massaad was detained in Saudi Arabia on 20 September on an international warrant that was requested by the RAK authorities in connection with an alleged multi-million pound fraud at Rakia. He had been convicted of the fraud in absentia in October 2015.

CTF Communications, his public relations advisers, said their client is the subject of 'a state sponsored vendetta' since 2012 when the Crown Prince 'sidelined' him after more than 20 years as a trusted adviser with full power of attorney over his business affairs.

In a statement to Spinwatch, Massaad denied 'he ever illegally received monies from Mr Azima'.

Lawyers for Azima are countersuing Rakia in the US accusing it of hacking his personal emails in order to extort money from him. The claim alleges that after Azima’s attempt to negotiate a settlement between Rakia and Massaad he was warned he would become 'collateral damage'.

Bell Pottinger, who act for Rakia, said it considered Azima’s US claim to be 'baseless and an attempt to distract attention from his own conduct'.

The CIA, Azima and Iran

Behind the bribery claims is a story of international intrigue, shadow cold war warriors, secret offshore accounts and sanctions.

Azima arrived in Kansas from Iran in 1962 to study. He came from a prominent Azeri-Iranian family and became a naturalised US citizen in 1979.

His company, Global International Airways, which carried goods to Iran – folded after the pro-US Shah was deposed in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolutionary guard.

In 1984, Azima formed Aviation Leasing Group (ALG) and expanded operations through the Middle East and Latin America. ALG had an UK office on London’s Park Lane, where Azima lived. His company was a client of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers leak.

As his cargo business grew, the CIA is said to have secretly approached Azima to ferry arms around the world. An ALG plane leased to a company owned by his brother was involved in carrying arms to Iran as part of a wider covert operation to buy back western hostages. The CIA then illegally diverted money from the arms sales to fund anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Azima denied all knowledge when the so-called Iran-Contra scandal imploded in 1986 during the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan.

However, his aviation business was later involved in supporting US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2012. 'I’ve done classified work [and] I’m proud of it,' he is reported saying.

Three Iranians and a US sanctions list

In 2009, Azima tried to facilitate meetings between Bill Clinton and the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah in return for a donation to the Clinton Foundation.

It was in RAK that Azima met Massaad, who from 2007 to 2012 was chief executive of Rakia, the sovereign wealth fund. Massaad was the golden boy credited with turning the oil-poor most northern emirate into a financial force through its wealth in rock that would drive the UAE construction boom and ceramics industry.

Mossack Fonseca administered a British Virgin Island incorporated company, Eurasia Hotel Holdings, which handled the sale of the Sheraton Metechi Palace Hotel to the three Iranian businessmen in October 2011.

At the time, the trio were suspected of helping Tehran get around international sanctions. In 2014 the US Treasury put them on its list of 'Foreign Sanctions Evaders' following concerns that since 2011 they were using investments in Georgia, including buying a bank, to evade sanctions on Iran.

The fall out over the Sheraton hotel deal will cause embarrassment to Clinton, who was attacked by Trump during last week’s debate for being soft on Iran.

As secretary of state in the Obama administration, Clinton supported 'crippling sanctions' against Iran and, more recently, said she would attack the country if it tried to obtain nuclear weapons.

Azima is an individual donor of between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which was set up after former president Bill Clinton left office in 2001.

Neither Clinton nor the Foundation responded to a request for comment.