An FBI agent investigating a massive Turkish-Iranian sanctions-busting scheme confirmed that the Turkish government had pressured Washington for the release of key defendants in the illicit trade and that legal proceedings against co-conspirators were far from over. The remarks, the first of their kind by an American official at a public event, spell further trouble for Turkey’s creaky finances and fraught ties with the United States.
FBI special agent Jennifer McReynolds told a Washington audience on Aug. 28, “High-level foreign officials like Turkey’s ministers of justice and foreign affairs and Turkey’s President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan exerted diplomatic pressure. They lobbied the Department of Justice, the State Department and even the White House to release [Reza] Zarrab and [Mehmet Hakan Atilla] without a trial.”