A U.S. judge handed a 12-year prison sentence on Thursday to Hassan Nemazee, a former fundraiser for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who admitted to a $292 million fraud of three major banks.

Nemazee had pleaded guilty on March 18 to charges of bank fraud and wire fraud over loan transactions involving Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc and HSBC Holdings Plc.

The defendant was also sentenced to three years of supervised release, and ordered to make $292.3 million in restitution to the banks.

U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein in Manhattan pronounced the prison sentence, which is shorter than the term requested by prosecutors. They had sought a term of between 15 years and six months and 19 years and six months.

Nemazee was one of the top bundlers of contributions to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org.

He typically donated more than $100,000 annually to Democrats including Clinton, now U.S. secretary of state.

Nemazee is a U.S. citizen whose family left Iran after the 1979 revolution. He had also run Nemazee Capital Corp, a private equity firm.

The case is U.S. v Nemazee, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 09-00902.

(Reporting by Grant McCool, editing by Matthew Lewis)

Hillary Clinton Barack obama