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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Leila Heller’s mother was an excellent cook. When she lived in Tehran, Empress Farah Pahlavi – one of many family friends who sampled her cooking – suggested she write a cookbook. Then the revolution happened. Nahid Taghinia-Milani, known as Nahid Joon, left Iran in 1979 and ended up in New York with her husband and children. There her cooking took on greater significance: it became a means of preserving her heritage and bringing family and friends together. It also turned her into a star in the New York art world, thanks to a series of dinners she helped cater for her daughter’s gallery that became known as the tastiest invite in town.

Her friendships were multigenerational. People came for advice and stayed to be fed

“My mother’s legacy was her cooking,” writes Heller in Persian Feasts: Recipes & Stories from a Family Table (Phaidon), a new cookbook filled with her mother’s dishes. Among them, her Persian chicken salad, herb frittata, stuffed grape leaves, fesenjan (walnut, aubergine and pomegranate stew), braised lamb shanks and barberry rice. The founder of an eponymous gallery, Heller has been a fixture on the New York art scene since the early 1980s when she showed work by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. A dealer in Middle Eastern and Asian art, she opened a second gallery in Dubai in 2015. “[My mother] was a true artist,” she writes. “The abundant spices, fresh herbs and myriad ingredients were her paints; her sense of smell and taste were her paintbrushes.”

Nahid Joon lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side. Her kitchen was designed by her cousin, renowned architect Nasser Ahari. The cabinets were modelled on walnut fittings from their kitchen in Iran, and Nasser fashioned special bronze fixtures for the handles, floral bronze work for the glass doors, and bronze hooks in floral designs above the stove for Nahid Joon to hang her utensils.

Over the years the room played host to many precious memories. Like the marathon cooking sessions that preceded Nahid Joon’s dinner parties for up to 120 when she hooked up her six large rice cookers on the floor throughout the house and played classical music, Persian songs or her favourite singer, Julio Iglesias, as she cooked. Or Thanksgiving dinner when the whole family gathered in that kitchen to cook and Nahid Joon served her Persian-style turkey with cloves and sour cherry rice.

Even the simplest meal became a feast. Heller recalls her son Philip going for dinner one evening and requesting his favourite burgers only to find she had made 12. “I only know how to cook for 12.” Such was her generosity that nothing went to waste. “She wouldn’t just make a chicken thigh for herself. She’d make a whole chicken and give the rest to the doormen,” says Heller. “A bottle of wine too. When the board for the building told her she shouldn’t be giving them alcohol, she started hiding the wine in Perrier bottles.”

The dinners at her daughter’s gallery took off in 2008 when Heller threw an event to coincide with a Chelsea Art Museum show on Iranian art. “It was a last-minute event. I couldn’t arrange catering,” says Heller. “My mother suggested we cook ourselves. She made six dishes: a few rice dishes and stews. I made six, including my famous shrimp salad. We brought them to the gallery.” Dinners in a gallery were rare at the time. Heller’s have since become a regular practice attended by big-name collectors, curators and critics as well as figures such as CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour, a childhood friend. “My mother would call me the next day saying, ‘You’re going to kill me. I can’t do this again.’ But when the time came, she always helped. She loved feeding people.”

It wasn’t just her daughter she cooked with. She cooked with her daughter’s friends too. “My mother’s friendships were multigenerational,” says Heller. “People came for advice and stayed to be fed.”

In 2018, Nahid Joon died after she was hit by a car on the pavement. She was 84 years old. “She left us very suddenly,” Heller says. Nine hundred people attended her memorial, including the doormen. She left behind 150 recipes, all organised, now finally made into a book. “It’s so bittersweet,” says Heller. “I wish she was here. When they sent me the first copy, I said, ‘Mama, this should be you. It’s your book. You made this happen.’ She would have been so excited.” 

Persian Feasts: Recipes & Stories from a Family Table by Leila Heller, with Lila Charif, Laya Khadjavi, and Bahar Tavakolian is published by Phaidon, £34.95

@ajesh34

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

JPMorgan Chase and HSBC unwittingly processed payments for companies in Africa controlled by the deceased Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, as his sanctions-hit Wagner private army expanded across a continent where it has been accused of brutal human rights abuses.

Leaked documents obtained by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a Washington-based think-tank, show that in 2017 a Sudanese company controlled by Prigozhin made purchases of industrial equipment from China that passed through large western banks.

Wagner, which the US Treasury has accused of “mass executions, rape, child abductions and other brutalities against innocents” in Africa, became infamous for providing mercenary services to repressive dictators and for fighting in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The leaked documents show how Prigozhin, whose plane crashed last year after attempting a mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin, was able to establish a transnational criminal empire in natural resources in part by secretly hijacking the payments systems of western financial institutions.

One invoice shows that in August 2017, Meroe Gold, a Sudanese mining company that was a front for Wagner, sent a payment from a local bank account via JPMorgan Chase as an intermediate bank in New York to a seller in China.

Another invoice from the same year shows that Meroe Gold sent payment for diesel generators and spare parts to a Chinese company via Hang Seng Bank, which is part of the HSBC Group.

There is no evidence that these banks were aware they were handling transactions commissioned by Wagner Group front entities.

Meroe Gold was not under US sanctions at the time of the payments, but Prigozhin had been since 2016. Meroe was in 2018 later put under US sanctions for being “owned or controlled by Prigozhin” and helping him “exploit Sudan’s natural resources for personal gain”.

HSBC declined to comment on the specific transactions in Sudan, but the bank said it was “deeply committed to combating financial crime and to the integrity of the global financial system”.

“We have invested significantly in building and maintaining an effective control framework to detect and mitigate this risk,” it added.

JPMorgan said: “After a review of the limited details shared with us, we have not found any records matching those transactions.”

C4ADS, which has released a report into the leaked documents, said the transactions demonstrated that Prigozhin and Wagner would not have been able to establish a foothold in Africa without benefiting from the legitimate financial system.

Wagner’s growth in countries such as Sudan and the Central African Republic was the function of “a nexus between licit and illicit systems”, said C4ADS.

“To facilitate its early exploitation of natural resources, the internationally sanctioned organisation relied on a network of financial services and transportation networks to move supplies and generate revenue,” it added.

After Prigozhin’s demise in August 2023, the operations he built in Africa were absorbed into entities under direct control of the Russian defence ministry.

Hello and welcome back to Energy Source, coming to you from New York, where titans of industry, policymakers and green campaigners are gathering for Climate Week.

My Financial Times colleagues and I have a packed agenda of interviews and events and will do our best to report the highlights of what has become one of the largest annual climate events on the calendar.

We begin today with a scoop: an interview with Jennifer Granholm, the US energy secretary, who told me Donald Trump’s plan to gut the Biden administration’s sweeping climate law would hand China the advantage in a global cleantech race.

“We would be stabbing ourselves because it would be so foolish,” said the former governor of Michigan, who also talks about the LNG pause and Trump’s accusation that President Joe Biden has undermined “US energy independence”.

Our main item today takes us to South Africa, where our correspondent Rob Rose reports on TotalEnergies, which has come under fire for an advertising campaign.

Thanks for reading,

Jamie

TotalEnergies appeals South African greenwashing ruling

TotalEnergies this week will appeal the South African advertising regulator’s ruling that it was “misleading” for the French oil company to tout its commitment to “sustainable development” in a campaign with the country’s national parks.

This case, the first greenwashing dispute heard by South Africa’s Advertising Regulatory Board, a private, self-regulatory body set up to protect consumers, underscores how advertising represents a new front in the war between activists and oil companies over climate change. 

Total, however, has faced similar claims before across the globe, including a 2022 case in France brought by Greenpeace and other environmental groups, which accused it of breaching European consumer protection law. The company at the time said the allegations of greenwashing were false.

And it is not just oil companies facing the heat: in August, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned a Virgin Atlantic ad for making “misleading” claims about its first transatlantic flight, which the airline said used “100 per cent sustainable aviation fuel”.

At issue in South Africa is a campaign that Total ran in partnership with the country’s state-run national parks body, SANParks, in which it offered prizes for people who uploaded photos at these parks while tagging Total. It claimed in the ad that “we’re committed to sustainable development and environmental protection”. 

Fossil Free South Africa, the non-profit advocacy group that brought the greenwashing complaint to the ARB, argues this was a “completely false and misleading claim” since Total is the 19th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to think-tank InfluenceMap’s Carbon Majors database, and is developing oil and gas projects in Africa. 

In its initial argument at the tribunal, Total rejected the claim, saying that “limiting the consequences of global warming and providing energy is a global emergency around which TotalEnergies has defined its strategy”.

It added that this was not an “advertisement”, but rather a “corporate communication” about its social responsibility programme.

But in mid-August, the advertising body ruled that Total’s claim was “misleading”, adding that this did indeed amount to “advertising claims”.

“[Total] has shown that many of its projects are indeed directed at sustainable development. There is no doubt that this is an issue high on [its] priority list. However, it is also no doubt that the core business of [Total] is directly opposed to the issue of sustainable development,” the finding said.

On Thursday, Total will appeal the finding, in which the regulator said South African advertising agencies and marketers should not accept any advertising from the company in which it claimed it was committed to “sustainable development” when it came to the national parks.

“This finding is the first of its kind in South Africa, but only the latest in a series of findings around the world that confirm that fossil fuel companies should not be able to burnish their images by falsely claiming ‘green’ credentials and hiding the real and devastating impact of their businesses,” said Tracey Davies, the executive director of Just Share, a South African shareholder activist non-profit.

But in response to questions from Energy Source this week, Total spokesperson Marion Viry denied that the company was involved in greenwashing its credentials.

“The challenge is to build the energy system of tomorrow, while continuing to supply the energy the world needs today,” she said. “TotalEnergies invested $5bn in renewable and low-carbon energies in 2023 and in 2024.”

This is the second consecutive year in which Total invested more in low-carbon energy than in new oil and gas projects, Viry said, adding that by 2030, the company would be among the top five renewable energy producers.

It is a claim the French company has made repeatedly. After its annual general meeting in May of last year, Total’s chief executive Patrick Pouyanné hit out at the “grumps” who accused the company of greenwashing, saying “we’re convinced of the credibility of our climate transition plan.”

What’s at stake

In South Africa, while Total’s campaign with SANParks is no longer running, the ruling from the advertising authority will still have ramifications for how oil and gas companies market their clean energy efforts in the future.

“What happens in the appeal will be closely watched as it will set a precedent for how companies speak about their environmental commitments,” said Thameena Dhansay, a campaign manager for Fossil Free South Africa.

Dhansay told Energy Source that globally, fossil fuel companies such as Total have shifted their communications strategy as the political temperature over climate change has risen globally.

“From the 1970s, many oil companies chose a strategy of climate denialism. But this has evolved to climate delay — that is, promising to meet a net zero target by 2050. What they’re saying is ‘we will take action, but we can’t do it right now’,” she said.

Fossil Free South Africa said it intended to lodge complaints against other oil and gas companies at the advertising body to ensure they’re held to account for misleading consumers. 

“In an ideal world, it wouldn’t be up to a small industry regulator to deal with a weighty issue like fossil fuel industry greenwashing,” said David Le Page, director of the group. “Rather, governments should be taking this more seriously, given the opportunity it presents to mislead consumers and society.”

The South African case illustrates how high the stakes have become for oil and gas companies, which have poured millions into marketing their climate change mitigation efforts. 

Gail Schimmel, chief executive of South Africa’s ad board, told Energy Source that her entity was developing a code specifically to deal with greenwashing disputes, which are becoming more common globally. 

Schimmel said battles around the world between activists and companies over their green practices had led to “greenhushing” — companies opting not to communicate their climate goals at all for fear of being dragged into legal disputes. “This would obviously be a problem if it led to companies choosing not to invest in green initiatives as a result,” she said. (Rob Rose)

Power Points

• California sued ExxonMobil, alleging the oil supermajor deceived the public for half a century about the sustainability of its plastic products.

• The US proposed banning Chinese software and components in vehicles over fears that Beijing could collect data on American drivers and hack internet-connected cars.

• Western nations have joined forces to break China’s grip on critical minerals, announcing a financing network for projects to provide raw materials.

Energy Source is written and edited by Jamie Smyth, Myles McCormick, Amanda Chu, Tom Wilson and Malcolm Moore, with support from the FT’s global team of reporters. Reach us at energy.source@ft.com and follow us on X at @FTEnergy. Catch up on past editions of the newsletter here.

The Financial Conduct Authority has cleared its chair of whistleblowing wrongdoing following an internal review.

Last month, FCA’s chair Ashley Alder was criticised for revealing the identity of a whistleblower to other staff members.

The whistleblower sent emails to Alder in December and March to raise concerns over “opaque hiring practices” at the FCA.

However, Alder reportedly forwarded the whistleblower’s correspondence, revealing their identity without their consent, which goes against the regulator’s policy.

The whistleblower told the Financial Times that they were left “angry, stunned and speechless” when they saw the forwarded emails unredacted.

They called the breach “institutional betrayal” and accused the FCA of “incompetence and incapability”.

A second former FCA employee also made a similar allegation as to the handling of their whistleblowing communication to the chair.

Following the FT report, the FCA launched an internal review to investigate the complaints.

The board’s senior independent director, Richard Lloyd, led the internal review of the handling of the two individuals’ whistleblowing communications by the chair.

Lloyd concluded that “while the FCA’s chair did not follow our existing policy to the letter in handling two complex cases, he had sought to ensure the concerns raised, if appropriate, were acted on”.

“The FCA’s chair, Ashley Alder, therefore consulted senior colleagues confident they would treat the information with the utmost care,” he added.

He also said the chair “reasonably took the view that he was providing information of which those colleagues were already aware”.

Alder welcomed the review findings, insisting that he acted appropriately.

He said: “These were unusual and complex cases involving two employees who had left the FCA some years ago and who have raised a range of issues over an extended period of time, in one case through multiple public channels.

“I wanted to ensure that, as non-executive chair, I was in the best position to act on the concerns of both individuals.

“To do so, I needed to consult an extremely limited number of senior colleagues and, while I did not follow the policy to the letter, I knew that they would treat all information with utmost care, and there would be no risk of prejudice to the individuals involved.”

Simon Morris, a financial services partner with law firm CMS, said: “The FCA chair twice disclosed the identity of whistleblowers to colleagues when seeking help to respond. He thought this wouldn’t harm the whistleblowers, and that their names were already known.

“The Lloyd review concludes that this ‘did not follow to the letter’ – meaning breached – the FCA whistleblowing policy, but that the chair was acted reasonably.

“It will be interesting to see if the FCA takes a similarly benign view if a bank chairman reveals a whistleblower’s identity in analogous circumstances.”