A delegation from the Central Bank of Turkey will soon meet their Iranian counterparts in Tehran to remove hurdles in the way of bilateral banking relations, particularly difficulties involving Iranian citizens' bank accounts in the Turkish Halkbank, an Iranian central bank official said.
The meeting decision comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's U.S. visit. Iran-Turkey banking ties were overshadowed by the detention of a senior Halkbank official in the US in March for violating sanctions.
"Considering the events that have taken place, we have invited officials with the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey to travel to Iran, which they accepted," Hossein Yaqoubi, director general of the Central Bank of Iran for international affairs, told Fars News Agency.
Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a deputy chief executive officer at Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS, is accused of conspiring with Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader, to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on behalf of Iran and its companies. Zarrab has close ties to the administration of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who raised the gold trader’s arrest with former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden last year and accused the U.S. of ulterior motives in bringing the case.
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.
Yaqoubi was also quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA that "we have no problems with the Turkish Halkbank", but the bank has undergone changes in its management, Financial Tribune, an Iranian economic daily reported.
"Negotiations are underway with Halkbank to remove hurdles and develop exchanges," he said, adding that some of the troubles relate to anti-money laundering regulations because if the Turkish bank was found to have broken any rules, it would face serious repercussions from the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury Department.
According to a source in the Iran-Turkey Chamber of Commerce, Turkish Minister of Economy Nihat Zeybekci is also scheduled to visit Iran on June 21 to negotiate a preferential trade agreement between the two sides.
