U.S. Fight Over Zarrab’s Release Rekindles Turkey Bribe Plot
- Gold trader bribed Turkish ministers, bank CEO, U.S. says
- U.S. prosecutors say FBI probe corroborates corruption claims
The U.S. government’s efforts to deny bail to a 33-year-old gold trader has rekindled allegations of a multi-million dollar bribery scheme involving Turkey’s former EU minister, a charity close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the chief executive officer of a major state bank.
The trader, Reza Zarrab, was arrested in March in Florida and accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in a conspiracy to evade American sanctions against Iran. His lawyer said he was on a family trip to Disney World. In arguing to keep Zarrab in prison, U.S. officials told a New York judge Wednesday they had corroborated Turkish allegations that Zarrab had paid bribes to Turkish ministers and former Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS Executive Officer Suleyman Aslan, whose bank, according to the police reports, was used to process the trader’s Iranian transactions.