A trader accused of helping Iran evade sanctions invoked the name of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as part of a scheme that U.S. prosecutors say was supported by Turkey’s government, according to court documents, Bloomberg reported.
U.S. prosecutors in New York have gathered taped conversations and other records that suggest the trader may have sought support from Erdoğan. The Turkish president hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing, and it’s possible that the trader falsely invoked Erdoğan's name to influence others. The people charged in the case are captured in the recorded conversations, which were introduced in a filing in federal court in Manhattan, the report said.
The documents introduced in the sanctions and money-laundering case against the Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, could further complicate the relationship between the U.S. and Turkey. Erdoğan tried to pressure U.S. officials during the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations to drop the prosecution of the trader and has complained in public comments that prosecutors were trying to extract a confession from Zarrab and turn him into an informant. He also claimed President Trump apologized for the prosecution in a phone call, it added.
Close Trump associates including Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and Michael Mukasey, the former U.S. attorney general, have also been paid by Zarrab to seek a dismissal of the charges against him. In an extraordinary series of court filings, Giuliani and Mukasey said that they were granted meetings with unnamed senior administration officials to present their case and that they flew to Turkey to meet with Erdoğan in an effort to broker a deal.
The trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 27. Along with Zarrab, a Turkish banker has also been arrested in the case. Both sides have begun filing court documents unveiling the evidence they plan to use or hope to suppress during the trial.
Court filings by Zarrab's co-defendant suggest that he may have struck some kind of deal with prosecutors. They say that Zarrab is no longer participating in the case and that defence lawyers don't expect him to appear at trial. The precise reason for that isn't clear, but it could mean he has decided to plead guilty or cooperate with the government, or that prosecutors have dropped the charges. Both sides have declined to explain or elaborate, Bloomberg reported.
The new filing by prosecutors makes at least three references to evidence that they say suggests that Erdoğan or his family members may have known of or supported Zarrab’s activities. In one, the prosecutors cite a Sept. 19, 2013, wiretapped phone conversation between Zarrab and one of his employees about the alleged laundering scheme, in which Zarrab said: "Even if we do two billion, that is important. Do you understand? It is important for me, in the eye of the prime minister, since I will go straight to him." Erdoğan was prime minister at the time, the report underlined.
In another, prosecutors refer to a discussion that supposedly took place between Zarrab and Erdogan at a wedding in April 2013 in which Zarrab says he asked for Erdogan's support to buy a bank he hoped to use as a conduit for transactions with Iran. During a wiretapped call a few days later, according to prosecutors, Zarrab said: "I went to him and talked about the thing I was going to do, and I explained it that day at the wedding. I will go back and will say, 'Mr. Prime Minister, if you approve, give me a license.'" He didn’t ultimately buy the bank, the report added.
According to the report, they also cite instances of Zarrab directing donations to charitable foundations associated with Erdogan's relatives, including his son and another unnamed relative. Zarrab donated money to a charity run by Erdogan's wife as well, he has said in court filings. Prosecutors had made references to Zarrab's close relationship with Erdoğan and members of his family in earlier court documents in the Zarrab case. But the latest filings are the first to offer specific evidence suggesting Erdoğan may have known about the scheme, at least according to Zarrab.
The U.S. government "anticipates that the evidence introduced at trial will show that Turkish government and banking officials were integral to the sanctions evasion scheme," according to a document submitted to the court on Oct. 30.
Much of the evidence cited in the U.S. case emerged in a corruption investigation by Turkish prosecutors that was quashed by Erdogan in 2014 but hadn't been raised in the U.S. case until now. Erdoğan said the probe was aimed at bringing down his government and purged thousands of officials including prosecutors, judges and investigators involved in the case.
