A federal prosecutor says politically connected New York lawyers are using inaccuracies to whitewash charges against a prominent Turkish gold trader and are trying to get Turkey's president and U.S. officials to resolve the case diplomatically.
Michael Dennis Lockard, a government prosecutor, said Monday that Reza Zarrab is charged with a "serious national security offence." He says Zarrab led a multi-year conspiracy to allow the government of Iran and Iranian entities access to the U.S. financial system. Authorities say he enabled transactions banned by U.S. and international sanctions.
At a hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Richard Berman asked lawyers for updated information about what their firms have been doing on behalf of the Turkish government in the U.S.
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Mukasey, a former U.S. attorney general, hired to resolve criminal charges against Iranian - Turkish tycoon Reza Zarrab. Both of the lawyers, who have been advisers to US President Donald Trump, were hired by Zarrab also to seek a resolution to the case beyond the courtroom.
In a court filing last week, Giuliani said he’s met with senior officials in the U.S. and Turkey, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in an effort to broker a deal that might benefit Zarrab and bolster U.S. national security interests. Giuliani travelled overseas recently to see Erdoğan, the meeting was kept secret. Giuliani has for the first time acknowledged the contours of his unusual effort.
Lockard stressed the gravity of the charges, saying Giuliani and Mukasey had soft-pedaled the seriousness of the case in court filings. Lockard said the evidence would show Zarrab personally offered his services to circumvent sanctions to Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and paid tens of millions of dollars to high-level banking officials to help carry out the scheme.
In a related case, prosecutors last month charged Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a senior manager at Türkiye Halk Bankası A.Ş., a large state-owned bank, with conspiring with Zarrab. Prosecutors cited recorded conversations between Atilla and Zarrab in 2013 which suggested that the two were intentionally trying to disguise transactions involving a Dubai company in such a way that Western banks would approve funding. Atilla denies wrongdoing.
Zarrab, 33, who was born in Iran and moved to Turkey, has dual citizenship. He was charged with conspiring to facilitate millions of dollars in transactions on behalf of Iran and other sanctioned entities through the use of false documents and front companies, and with conspiracies to commit bank fraud and to commit money laundering.
Reza Zarrab, also known by the name Rıza Sarraf, was arrested in Turkey, in 2013 of bribing senior ministers from Erdoğan's ruling party with cash and lavish gifts as part of a scheme to bypass US sanctions on Iran. In 2014, Erdoğan dismissed investigators involved in the case, and charges against Zarrab and members of Erdoğan’s government were eventually dismissed. He was arrested in Miami after arriving in the U.S. for a family trip. The arrest threatens to reopen a case that reached right into Erdoğan’s inner circle and to tarnish the party that he founded.
