Iranian gold stars in Turkish corruption scandal
The CEO of Halkbank, which has been under scrutiny for bypassing US-EU sanctions on Iran, is at the center of bribery and corruption upheaval rattling Turkey.
It is difficult to predict how the bribery/corruption investigation into several Turkish ministers will end. Although there are those who frame the event as a power struggle between the Fethullah Gulen movement and the government, conspiracy theories expand its dimensions to include the United States and Iran. With the detentions of Suleyman Aslan, CEO of Halkbank, and Riza Sarraf, an Iranian businessman who deals with gold and was originally named Reza Zarrab, the focus is now on the Iran-Halkbank-gold triangle.
The government is looking for US and Israeli hands in the operation because of the use of Halkbank to circumvent the sanctions imposed on Iran. Prosecution sources stress that the investigation is aimed not at Halkbank but its CEO, after a search of his house yielded $4.5 million hidden in shoeboxes. But the arrival in Turkey of David Cohen, the US Treasury's undersecretary of terrorism and financial intelligence, shows the importance of the Sarraf-Halkbank file in the affair.
Since Iran was banned from using the international money-transfer system SWIFT as of March 2012 as stipulated by US-EU embargoes, there have been many media reports that Tehran has been using Turkey’s Halkbank to evade the restriction.
According to reports the police have delivered to prosecutors, this is how the plan worked: A system was hatched to bypass SWIFT queries by setting up front companies in China. Then, money was transferred from Iran with falsified documents to bank accounts opened in the names of those companies in the guise of reimbursements for imports from China. The money was immediately transferred to the accounts of real or front companies in Turkey as payment for exports, and used to purchase gold. The gold was then sent via couriers to Iran, or to Dubai to be forwarded to Iran.
