The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Albert Hakim.md

title	aliases	created	updated	category	tags	summary	born	died	location	relations
Albert Hakim	Albert Hakim	2026-05-17	2026-10-09	Arms Dealers & Brokers	Person IranContra CIA Iran ArmsDealer 1980s	Iranian-American businessman who co-directed the Iran-Contra Enterprise with Richard Secord, managing its finances and negotiating with Iranian officials before pleading guilty in 1989 to supplementing Oliver North's salary.	1930-01-01	2003-01-01	San Jose, California	type with role start fn partner_of Richard Secord equal partner in Stanford Technology Trading Group International; co-directed the Enterprise 1983 3 type with role start fn founded Stanford Technology Trading Group International co-founded with Secord in 1983; chairman 1983 7

Albert Hakim was an Iranian-American businessman who co-directed the private covert operations network known as the Enterprise with retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord during the Iran-Contra Affair. Hakim's Iranian business background and contacts within the Iranian defense community under the Shah made him the Enterprise's primary financial architect and a key negotiator with Iranian officials. He pleaded guilty in November 1989 and cooperated with Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's investigation.¹

Background

Hakim was born in Iran in the 1930s. He built a substantial business importing and exporting technology and defense-related goods to Iran during the Shah's era, establishing relationships with Iranian military and government procurement officials that would later prove central to the Iran-Contra arms sales. He became a U.S. citizen and settled in California. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution ended his Iran business, Hakim continued in international arms and technology trading, which brought him into contact with Secord.¹

Secord testified that he met Hakim in 1976 or 1977 in Iran, when Hakim was selling electronic intelligence systems to the Iranian Air Force and the Air Force mission recommended discontinuing a 23 million dollar project as redundant to another program; Hakim came to Secord's office to protest.² The congressional report states that Hakim's Iranian operations included an effort to sell electronic intelligence systems to the Iranian government and payoffs to Iranian Air Force and Army generals through "bearer letters" and numbered Swiss accounts.³ The Los Angeles Times reported that in a 1983 deposition in Connecticut Hakim admitted using Swiss bank accounts to funnel millions of dollars in payoffs to Iranian military officers.⁴

According to CIA files cited in the congressional report, in August 1976 Ted Shackley tried to arrange for Secord to assist Hakim in obtaining security contracts with the Iranian government in return for Hakim providing intelligence to the CIA, with Tom Clines to introduce Hakim to Secord; a CIA official rebuffed the proposal in part because Hakim had sold the Iranians "unneeded over sophisticated equipment at exorbitant price[s]." Hakim testified that Edwin Wilson introduced him to Clines and Shackley and that the meeting never occurred.⁵ In a May 22, 1987 deposition Hakim said that Wilson had infiltrated his organization through his associate Frank Terpil and that he removed both in 1976 or 1977.⁶

Secord testified that in 1980 he gave Hakim's name, among several Iranian names, to U.S. intelligence personnel for vetting and possible use in the operation to rescue the American hostages in Iran, and that Hakim was contacted, vetted and volunteered his services.²

Enterprise Financial Structure

Hakim was the financial architect of the Enterprise. He established Lake Resources S.A., a Swiss financial entity that served as the central account through which Enterprise revenues and disbursements were channeled. The structure was designed to obscure the money's origins and movements from congressional oversight and government auditing. Enterprise funds received markups from weapons sales to Iran, CIA operational funds, and later additional transfers from various sources. Hakim later testified that the Enterprise had generated approximately $48 million in revenues, of which approximately $3.8 million was applied to Contra operations, with the remainder retained by the Enterprise or disbursed to its principals.¹

Hakim and Secord operated Stanford Technology Trading Group International (STTGI) as the nominal business vehicle for Enterprise arms transactions. In the direct sales of United States weapons to Iran that began early in 1986, Walsh wrote, the Enterprise "acted as agent, a front, for the true owner of the arms, the United States"; in 1986 it received 30.3 million dollars from the sale of that property to Iran and for replacement TOW missiles to Israel, and only 12.2 million dollars was returned to the United States. In the contra sales that began in late 1984 Secord and Hakim acted as brokers, buying weapons from other arms dealers.⁷

Hakim tried to recruit Secord in 1983 to revive his security-sales company, Expantrade, by offering security systems to foreign governments; Secord joined him in May 1983 as an equal partner in Stanford Technology Trading Group International (STTGI).³ Hakim was STTGI's chairman and Secord its president, and the two wholly controlled it; STTGI was distinct from Stanford Technology Corporation, which Hakim founded in 1974. Walsh wrote that "by 1986, the business of STTGI was the Enterprise."⁷ Lake Resources S.A., "the company controlled by Hakim to launder the Enterprise's money flow," pleaded guilty to the corporate felony of theft of government property; Hakim pleaded guilty on November 21, 1989 to a misdemeanor count of supplementing the salary of North.⁸⁹ In 1985 and 1986 Hakim received 2.06 million dollars from the Enterprise and 550,249 dollars in cash, of which 478,508 dollars went for unknown purposes.⁹ After his plea Hakim agreed to accept 1.7 million dollars of about 9 million dollars frozen in the Swiss accounts and to waive the remainder, and later refused to carry out the agreement; Secord filed a claim in the Swiss courts for the money while the agreement was under negotiation.⁹

Iran Negotiations

Hakim served as a direct negotiator with Iranian officials. In October 1986 - weeks before the Enterprise was exposed by the Hasenfus shootdown - Hakim met in Geneva with an Iranian representative identified as Mehdi Najjar or "the Relative" (a nephew of Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani) to negotiate terms for continued arms sales and the potential release of American hostages held in Lebanon. The Nine-Point Plan that Hakim negotiated with Najjar included detailed commitments about future arms deliveries, arrangements for hostage releases, and political terms that exceeded what Oliver North and other American officials had authorized. The plan was later criticized by North and others as an unauthorized expansion of U.S. commitments to Iran.¹⁰

Criminal Proceedings

The Enterprise was exposed in October 1986 following the shootdown of a Contra resupply aircraft over Nicaragua. Hakim cooperated with the subsequent congressional and independent counsel investigations. In November 1989, he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of illegally supplementing the salary of a government employee (specifically, Oliver North, to whom Hakim had provided access to an Enterprise account for personal use). Hakim's cooperation provided detailed documentation of the Enterprise's financial accounts and operations that was central to Walsh's broader reconstruction of Iran-Contra.¹⁰

Hakim died in 2003. His cooperation with Walsh, unlike the defiant posture of some other Iran-Contra defendants, was considered a significant contribution to the public record of the affair.¹⁰

Footnotes

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1. Walsh, Lawrence E. Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up. W.W. Norton, 1997, pp. 178-192. Tower Commission Report (President's Special Review Board). The Tower Commission Report. Bantam Books/Times Books, 1987. ↩︎

2. Testimony of Richard V. Secord, Iran-Contra Investigation: Joint Hearings, 100th Cong., 1st sess., Hearings 100-1, May 5-8, 1987, p. 47, https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41152829_0342. ↩︎

3. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, H. Rept. 100-433 / S. Rept. 100-216 (1987), ch. 21, pp. 326-327, https://archive.org/details/reportofcongress87unit. ↩︎

4. Los Angeles Times, March 29, 1987, "Secord: A Specialist in Covert Deals," CIA Reading Room CIA-RDP90-00965R000201700001-4, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-00965r000201700001-4. ↩︎

5. H. Rept. 100-433, ch. 21, n. 23 (CIA files C7 147-59; Shackley deposition, Sept. 21, 1987, at 284-300; Hakim deposition, May 31, 1987, at 229-33). ↩︎

6. H. Rept. 100-433, ch. 21, n. 20 (Hakim deposition, May 22, 1987, at 28-29, 32). ↩︎

7. Lawrence E. Walsh, Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, vol. I, pt. V, ch. 8, pp. 159-172, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_08.htm. ↩︎

8. Walsh, Final Report, vol. I, "Executive Summary," pp. xiii ff., https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/execsum.htm. ↩︎

9. Walsh, Final Report, vol. I, pt. V, ch. 10, "United States v. Albert Hakim," pp. 179-180, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_10.htm. ↩︎

10. U.S. Congress, Joint Committees on Iran-Contra. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair. 100th Congress, 1st Session, 1987. Walsh, Lawrence E. Iran-Contra: The Final Report. Random House, 1994. ↩︎