A US jury has found an executive at majority state-owned Halkbank, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, guilty of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions, after a nearly four-week trial that has strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Turkey.
Atilla was convicted on five of six counts he faced, including bank fraud and conspiracy, in Manhattan federal court. He was also found not guilty on a money laundering charge. Jurors issued their verdict on the fourth day of deliberations.
Prosecutors had accused Atilla of conspiring with a gold trader, Reza Zarrab, and others to help Iran escape sanctions using fraudulent gold and food transactions. Zarrab pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecutors, the Guardian reported.
In several days on the witness stand, Zarrab described a sprawling scheme that he said included bribes to Turkish government officials and was carried out with the blessing of Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan has publicly dismissed the case as a politically motivated attack on his government.
US prosecutors have criminally charged nine people, though only Zarrab, 34, and Atilla, 47, have been arrested by US authorities. Zarrab pleaded guilty and testified against Atilla.
The trial carried echoes of an investigation in Turkey in 2012 and 2013 that involved Zarrab and multiple government officials. One of the prosecutors’ witnesses was a former Turkish police officer, Hüseyin Korkmaz, who said he led that investigation.
Korkmaz said he was jailed in retaliation, and eventually fled to the United States, carrying evidence from his investigation with him.
The Turkish government has said that followers of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen were behind both the Turkish investigation and the US case, as well as the 2016 failed coup in Turkey. Gulen has denied the accusations.
