Iranian social media figure facing fraud charges extradited
TURKEY has handed over to Iran a popular Iranian social media figure, Milad Hatami, accused by Tehran of money-laundering and fraud in connection with online gambling, a senior Iranian police official said on Tuesday.
“He has been extradited . . . and faces charges linked to cybercrime, fraud and money laundering,” Brigadier-General Hadi Shirzad, head of Iran’s branch of the international police organisation Interpol, told state television.
Turkish officials did not immediately comment on the reported extradition.
Iran has been cracking down on online gambling and betting sites, which are illegal under the country’s Islamic laws, and have also been accused of money laundering. Iranian media said last week that the central bank had identified 450,000 bank cards used on the websites.
Hatami, a celebrity influencer with 1.2 million followers on Instagram, is based in neighbouring Turkey which is home to many Iranian exiled artists, dissidents and refugees,
including about 40,000 United Nations-registered asylum seekers.
Regional powers Iran and Turkey have grown closer under Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan despite sometimes deep differences, including in Syria where they back opposing sides in the 10-year-old conflict.
THERESA Villiers, Tory MP for Chipping Barnet, definitely needs writing to. Her latest pro-Greek Cypriot parliamentary tirade is to ask the Home Secretary to “remove the reference to the socalled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus from the list of locations included in the Passenger Locator form on www.gov.uk and replace it with the north of Cyprus, consistent with the long-standing policy on Cyprus of successive UK governments”. There are none so blind as those who will not see, eh?