US arrest of Turkey's Halkbank executive in Iran sanction scheme sinks shares

ISTANBUL, Turkey (Kurdistan24) - Shares of Turkish state lender Halkbank suffered their biggest one-day fall on Wednesday after U.S. prosecutors charged a senior executive with facilitating a scheme to evade sanctions against Iran.

The case happened amidst escalating US-Turkey tensions, prompting diplomatic tensions and political maneuvering between the two NATO allies.

Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a deputy chief executive officer at Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS was arrested at JFK airport on Monday night, a prosecutor told a magistrate judge at a hearing on Tuesday.

He has allegedly conspired with an Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on behalf of Iran and its companies.

Atilla's held without bail arrest has dramatically plummeted the bank shares in Istanbul.

Iranian gold trader Zarrab has close ties to the administration of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan who bargained for his release with the former American Vice President Joe Biden.

Atilla is accused of facilitating Zarrab to access international financial networks, according to the complaint filed in a U.S. court.

Zarrab is suspected of providing gold and currency to Iran through the bank, while creating false documents to make the transactions appear to be food so they would fall within humanitarian exceptions to the sanctions law, according to the court papers.

Zarrab has reportedly hired almost 20 of New York’s elite white-collar criminal defense lawyers to represent him -- including former New York Mayor and U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, and Michael B. Mukasey, the former U.S. attorney general.