The price of heroism

A Turkish banker is likely to do some time in a federal prison after being convicted Wednesday of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

And one can feel a certain sympathy for Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the 47-year-old deputy general manager of Turkey’s state-run Halkbank. He’s just the guy who got caught — for aiding a complex scheme to help Iran evade sanctions and allowing it to sell about $1 billion in oil and gas for gold — gold that moved through U.S. institutions without their knowledge.

But it’s the big guys who made the money — big guys still walking around.

Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader who became a key witness for the prosecution testified that he paid over $50 million in bribes to Turkey’s finance minister in 2012 to advance the scheme, and that he believed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan knew about the plot.

He also testified to payoffs to other Turkish government officials. In fact nine people, including a former Turkish economy minister, were charged here, but only Atilla and Zarrab could be taken into custody during visits to the U.S.

The real hero in the case was a Turkish police officer, Huseyin Korkmaz, who built the original gold-for-oil case in Turkey — until he found himself “reassigned” to guard a bridge. He managed to flee Turkey, taking with him a considerable number of documents that became evidence in the New York case.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said Atilla was convicted after a “full, fair and open trial.” That’s something that sadly is rare in Turkey these days — with its once independent judiciary in tatters and too many of its independent journalists in jail.

And as if to prove the point that in Turkey these days the law is what Erdogan says it is, the Turkish government has seized Zarrab’s assets and is investigating whether he spied for a foreign country. It has issued detention warrants for Korkmaz’s parents, wife and siblings and has asked the U.S. that he be extradited. The latter is highly unlikely, since he fled with the help of U.S. law enforcement. But such is the high price of heroism in Turkey today.