Key witness in US probe of Turkey's Halkbank to be sentenced 9 years after plea

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK, June 15 (Reuters) - A key cooperating witness in the U.S. government's criminal investigation into Turkish lender Halkbank's alleged role in helping Iran evade sanctions is due to be sentenced in July, nearly nine years after he pleaded guilty, court records showed on Monday.

• Reza Zarrab's sentencing has been scheduled for July 14 in Manhattan federal court.

• It is common in U.S. criminal cases for cooperating witnesses to be sentenced only after the cases in which they may be called to testify are finished.

• U.S. District Judge Richard Berman set the date as he is separately weighing a request by U.S. prosecutors to drop their case against Halkbank due to a deal reached with the bank.

• Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, pleaded guilty on October 26, 2017, to conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions.

• He testified against former Halkbank official Mehmet Hakan Atilla at trial in New York in 2017. Atilla was convictedof helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions.

• The U.S. separately charged Halkbank in 2019 with helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. It pleaded not guilty.

• Prosecutors in March said they had reached an agreement with Halkbank to drop the charges in exchange for the bank barring transactions that benefit Iran, among other conditions. That deal sent Halkbank's shares soaring on the Istanbul stock exchange.

• Berman paused the Halkbank case for 90 days to give the bank time to demonstrate compliance. He is due to hold a hearing on June 17 to consider prosecutors' bid to dismiss the case.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)