How Erdogan got around sanctions
COURT HEARS OF BILLIONS IN BRIBERY
It’s a case that has captivated Turkey and rattled Ankara: Reza Zarrab has become the star witness in a New York trial over alleged subversion of US economic sanctions against Iran, implicating a former Turkish minister and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Turkish-Iranian gold trader, who was arrested in March 2016 en route to a family trip to Miami, revealed this week in Manhattan federal court that he paid more than €50 million (R815 million) in bribes to former Turkish economy minister Zafer Caglayan between 2012 and 2013.
This allowed him to become a key intermediary of a complex but lucrative regional trade circuit that enabled Iran to inject billions of euros of hydrocarbon revenues into the international banking sector, all the while circumventing US sanctions prohibiting trade with Tehran.
The 34-year-old Zarrab then implicated Erdogan.
He affirmed that Erdogan, then prime minister, had given “instructions” that two other public banks would participate in the lucrative gold-for-oil scheme.
Born in Iran, Zarrab said he began working in the tea trade at just 16, before working for two years for a foreign exchange company his father owned in Dubai.
He then launched his own businesses in construction, shipping and foreign exchange.
But his world came tumbling down in December 2013, when he became a key figure in a Turkish corruption scandal in which he allegedly bribed four ministers, including Caglayan, to facilitate sanctions-busting trade.
He was held for 70 days until prosecutors dropped all charges.
US authorities arrested Zarrab in March 2016, as he travelled with his superstar wife Ebru Gundes and their daughter to Miami for a Disney World holiday.
Caglayan and eight others were subsequently charged with carrying out hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions in violation of US sanctions.
Turkish prosecutors have ordered the seizure of Zarrab’s assets. – AFP