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Wednesday 16 October 2019 - 05:21
US charges Turkey's Halkbank with evading Iran sanctions
Story Code : 822287
The US Justice Department announced on Tuesday that it had charged Turkey's state-run Halkbank with six counts of fraud, money laundering, and sanctions offenses.
The US prosecutors claimed that Halkbank used a web of front companies to allow Iran to spend revenues from its gas and oil sales on international markets between 2012 and 2016.
"This is one of the most serious Iran sanctions violations we have seen," Assistant Attorney General for US National Security John Demers alleged in a statement.
Demers claimed that Halkbank had violated sanctions by "illegally giving Iran access to billions of dollars' worth of funds, all while deceiving US regulators about the scheme."
“The bank’s audacious conduct was supported and protected by high-ranking Turkish government officials, some of whom received millions of dollars in bribes to promote and protect the scheme,” Demers added.
Ever since quitting the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in May 2018, the US administration has been running a "maximum pressure" campaign to force Iran to negotiate a new deal that addresses its ballistic missiles program and regional influence.
Iran, which had been fully complying with all of its commitments despite the US withdrawal and the Europeans’ failure to abide by their obligations under the deal, began scaling down its commitments in early July.
Tehran has so far cut back on its commitments under the deal in three stages, most notably increasing uranium enrichment to purity levels beyond the 3.67 percent and stockpiling enriched uranium to amounts more than the 300kg cap set in the agreement.
Source : presstv
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