Erdoğan knew of alleged Iranian scheme to evade sanctions via Turkey, court told
Source: The Guardian
A scheme Iran allegedly used to evade sanctions through a state-owned bank in Turkey has been detailed in court by a businessman who claimed the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had been aware of the billion-dollar operation.
In a case that has strained relations between Turkey and the US, Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, described a sprawling money laundering network that allowed Iran access to international markets from 2010 to 2015 in violation of sanctions over its nuclear programme.
He told jurors in New York on Thursday that Erdoğan, who was prime minister of Turkey at the time, had personally authorised a transaction on behalf of Iran. Zarrab said he had bribed the then Turkish economy minister Zafer Çağlayan and the former head of the state-owned Halkbank.
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The Turkish government had repeatedly raised Zarrab’s case with the US, demanding his release before the plea deal was made public. Senior Turkish officials have in recent weeks condemned the trial as a plot engineered by Fethullah Gülen, a Pennsylvania-based cleric accused by the government of orchestrating an attempted coup last year.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/30/us-court-alleged-iran-scheme-avoid-sanctions-turkey
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