Trump's deal with the mysterious Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab

June 22, 2017

Independent Aggregator of Iran-related News/Events, Kodoom.com: The mysterious case of Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Azerbaijani-Iranian gold trader being held in a Manhattan jail, has gotten more interesting as two prominent and well connected American lawyer-politicians have joined Zarrab's legal defense team, Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and Trump surrogate, and Michael B. Mukasey, former US attorney general under President George W. Bush, according to Veterans Today.

According to New York Times, in late February Giuliani and Mukasey met with Erdogan in Turkey to reach a diplomatic deal under which Turkey might further aid the United States’ interests in the region. In return, the United States might release the two men’s client, Reza Zarrab facing charges of "conspiring to violate the United States’ sanctions on Iran," to which Zarrab has pleaded not guilty. Allegedly, Turkey bought Iranian oil during US-imposed sanctions on Iran, in exchange for gold traded through Zarrab to Iran.

Born in Iran and raised in Turkey, Zarrab, 33, was arrested once in 2013 in Turkey on charges of corruption, then released, and arrested again in the U.S. by F.B.I. agents, in Miami, last March. At the time, he was one of the flashiest and wealthiest businessmen in Turkey. He sported a pouf of black hair; owned twenty houses, seven yachts, and a private jet; was married to Ebru Gündeş, one of Turkey’s biggest pop stars; and counted among his friends Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s strongman President.

In March, President Trump fired Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, whose office first charged Mr. Zarrab.

Zarrab’s far-flung activities first came to public light four years ago—entirely by accident. On January 1, 2013, a cargo plane from Accra, Ghana, was diverted to Istanbul’s main international airport, because of fog. When customs officials searched the plane, they found three thousand pounds of gold bars. Turkish prosecutors—who at that time still had enough independence to challenge the central government—determined that Zarrab had been paying millions of dollars in bribes to senior officials in Erdoğan’s government, and they had the businessman arrested and charged. The police themselves were stunned. “We didn’t expect this little investigation to give way to a bigger one,’’ Nazmi Ardıç, the chief of the Istanbul police department’s organized-crime unit, told me in 2015.

According to New Yorker, another new layer of mystery unfolded when in March F.B.I. agents arrested Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the deputy C.E.O. of Halk Bank—the same bank that prosecutors allege that Zarrab used to launder his gas-for-gold transactions—upon his arrival at J.F.K. International Airport, in New York. The case against Atilla was built on much of the same evidence—wiretapped phone conversations—that was used to charge Zarrab. The Turkish government was not happy with Atilla’s arrest.

Babak Zanjani

Zarrab's main Iranian business partner was Babak Zanjani, an Iranian billionaire, business magnate and managing director of the United Arab Emirates based Sorinet Group, one of Iran's largest business conglomerates. In late 2013, Zanjani was arrested for collusion with foreign governments and accused of withholding $2.7 billion of funds owned by Iranian Ministry of Petroleum, in his attempts to facilitate Iran's oil revenue hindered by the sanctions against Iran.

Zarrab has a child with Turkey's famous pop music star Ebru Gündeş, who has reportedly filed for divorce in September 2016.

Giuliani, while trying to help release of the Turkish-Iranian Zarrab, has also been working against the Iranian government by supporting Maryam Rajavi, the Head of MKO, an armed opposition group trying to overthrow the Iranian government.

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