Gold trader gets time served in Iran sanctions case that strained US-Turkey relations

NEW YORK (AP) — Reza Zarrab, a businessman who admitted conspiring with a Turkish bank to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions by trading its oil for gold, was sentenced Tuesday to time already served after cooperating with investigators in a case that strained relations between the U.S. and Turkey.

Zarrab has testified that he paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Turkey to facilitate the sanctions-busting scheme. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, publicly disparaged the corruption allegations as an American plot to “blackmail” Turkey, and lobbied the administrations of three U.S. presidents to halt the case.

President Donald Trump — who has had a warm relationship with Erdogan — allowed the case to go forward in his first term. But this year, Trump’s Justice Department dropped its longtime effort to prosecute Halkbank, a state-run institution indicted in 2019 on charges that it helped Iran move $20 billion in sanctioned oil revenue.

Zarrab was released from jail following the 2017 trial after saying he was accosted by a knife-wielding inmate who threatened to kill him for cooperating with U.S. authorities. Before he was sentenced Tuesday, he spoke briefly to thank U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman and the government for its efforts to protect him and his family.

Prosecutors in New York credited him with providing “truthful, complete and reliable” assistance to investigators. By doing so, he avoided the possibility of decades in prison. He pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy, bank fraud and money laundering.

Zarrab’s sentencing ends an operatic legal and diplomatic saga that was closely watched by the Turkish public.

Born in Iran, he moved to Turkey with his family as a toddler. He was initially arrested in 2013 as part of a sweeping anticorruption probe overseen by Turkish law enforcement officials, but was quickly freed. Many of the police officers involved in the investigation were then purged from their jobs after Erdogan claimed it was a foreign plot orchestrated by the U.S. government.

Three years later, Zarrab was arrested in Miami after flying there for a trip to Disney World with his wife at the time, Turkish pop singer and TV personality Ebru Gundes, and their then-4-year-old daughter.

Zarrab hired former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to seek a diplomatic solution to the case. Erdogan publicly demanded Zarrab’s release.

Then, in 2017, came a twist: Zarrab secretly pleaded guilty to the charges, and appeared as a surprise witness at the U.S. trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla.

Zarrab testified he paid millions of dollars in bribes to government and banking officials in Turkey to help Iranians and their government evade U.S. sanctions.

And he said that Erdogan, while he was Turkey’s prime minister in 2012, had given approval for two Turkish banks to participate in sham gold trades to enable Iran to get access to oil and gas revenue.

Atilla, who maintained that he was innocent, was convicted and sentenced to 32 months in prison. At the time, Erdogan called the verdict “scandalous.”

In a pre-sentence memorandum submitted on Zarrab’s behalf, his lawyers said his life had changed dramatically since the trial. He got divorced from Gundes in 2021 and married a former Turkish national swimmer last year.

His attorneys said Zarrab was “destitute and heavily in debt” after his plea and cooperation, adding that his assets and his family’s assets have been seized by the Turkish government, costing his family’s businesses “many tens of millions of dollars in lost rental income.”

After his guilty plea, they added, Zarrab forfeited a $288,000 boat and $88,000 in cash to the U.S. government. He claimed he is $50 million in debt. Berman said the boat and cash was sufficient forfeiture and he declined to impose restitution or a fine.

“Reza at long last should be allowed to rebuild his life,” his lawyers wrote. They said the prosecution and Turkey’s labeling of him as a traitor continue to haunt him, spoiling his efforts to build a horse farm in the U.S. and to appear in public without someone recognizing him and outing him on social media.