McCain, Obama funds invest in firms working in Iran

WASHINGTON -- John McCain and Barack Obama have urged investors to steer clear of Iran, but their family investments include mutual funds with shares in companies doing business in the oil-rich country, their financial disclosures show.

Obama decided to sell his mutual fund investment after USA TODAY asked about it Monday, spokesman Ben LaBolt said.

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for McCain, said McCain's wife, Cindy, once controlled three such mutual funds but sold two of them. He did not say when the sales took place.

All three were held in trust for the McCain children. The third fund has not been sold, Bounds said. "We're reviewing it and evaluating the best course of action," he said.

McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, raised the investment issue Monday in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He called on corporations and government institutions to pull their money out of Iran.

"As more people, businesses, pension funds and financial institutions across the world divest from companies doing business with Iran, the radical elite who run that country will become even more unpopular than they are already," McCain said.

A trust for the McCain children, a fund controlled by Cindy McCain, had between $315,000 and $650,000 in three JPMorgan mutual funds with investments in companies doing business with Iran, according to John McCain's 2006. disclosure report, the most recent available.

JPMorgan's website shows that each fund's top investment is with an oil company that works in Iran: Total SA of France for the firm's International Equity Fund; Eni SpA of Italy for the International Equity Index Fund and Petroleo Brasileiro SA of Brazil for the Emerging Markets Equity Fund. All three firms list their operations in Iranian oil fields in their latest annual reports.

Last month, Cindy McCain sold about $2 million worth of shares in two other mutual funds that invested in companies doing business in Sudan, which the Bush administration has accused of genocide. Obama sold his stakes in similar Sudan-related mutual funds last year.