{"id":6194,"date":"2026-07-14T22:24:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=6194"},"modified":"2026-07-14T22:24:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:24:44","slug":"gold-trader-gets-time-served-in-iran-sanctions-case-that-strained-us-turkey-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=6194","title":{"rendered":"Gold trader gets time served in Iran sanctions case that strained US-Turkey relations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"prism-article-body\">\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \"><span class=\"oyrPY qlwaB AGxeB  \">NEW YORK &#8212; <\/span>Reza Zarrab, a businessman who admitted conspiring with a Turkish bank to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions by <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/iran-sanctions-reza-zarrab-24d598beef98080ccd1b63b676a2555b\">trading its oil for gold<\/a> will not spend any more time behind bars in a case that strained relations between the U.S. and Turkey.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said at a hearing Tuesday he plans to sentence Zarrab to time already served. Prosecutors credited Zarrab with providing \u201ctruthful, complete and reliable\u201d assistance to American investigators, including <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/general-news-c610ae89f2194717954ff92280448583\">testifying that he paid millions of dollars in bribes<\/a> to officials in Turkey to facilitate the sanctions-busting scheme.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Zarrab pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy, bank fraud and money laundering. Before deciding to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors in New York, he had faced the possibility of decades in prison.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Zarrab\u2019s sentencing ends an operatic legal saga that generated diplomatic tension between the U.S. and Turkey and was closely watched by the Turkish public.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Turkey\u2019s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, publicly disparaged the corruption allegations <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/general-news-e707bb157c2e499eaffee4cf86940f8b\">as a U.S. plot to \u201cblackmail\u201d Turkey<\/a>, and lobbied the administrations of three U.S. presidents to halt the case.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, both Democrats, declined to intervene. President Donald Trump \u2014 <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/nato-summit-trump-erdogan-bond-c3fbddc43d7f4b0b12fcc2442ee03613\">who has had a warm relationship with Erdogan<\/a> \u2014 allowed the case to go forward in his first term. But this year, Trump\u2019s Justice Department dropped its longtime effort to prosecute Halkbank, a state-run institution indicted in 2019 on charges that it helped Iran <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/general-news-a66423c677cd4479965562238c4e640b\">move $20 billion in sanctioned oil revenue<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Zarrab, who was born in Iran but was moved to Turkey with his family as a toddler, was initially arrested in 2013 as part of a sweeping anticorruption probe overseen by Turkish law enforcement officials \u2014 but he was quickly freed. Many of the police officers involved in the investigation were then purged from their jobs after Erdogan <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/general-news-international-news-9d4603bbda07460d922fff81f31df27e\">claimed it was a foreign plot<\/a> orchestrated by the U.S. government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Three years later, Zarrab was arrested in Miami after flying to the U.S. with his wife at the time, Turkish pop singer and TV personality Ebru Gundes, and their then-4-year-old daughter for a trip to Disney World.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Before he became a cooperator for the U.S. government, 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\u2019s release.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Then, in 2017, came a twist: Zarrab secretly pleaded guilty to the charges, then appeared as a surprise witness at the U.S. trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Atilla, who maintained that he was innocent, <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/0fa3fefba2d64c97aea17d7453b5670a\">was convicted<\/a> and <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/e80bbd3c6e2347f9aa66a82ff39359f3\">sentenced to 32 months<\/a> in prison. At the time, Erdogan called the verdict \u201cscandalous.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Zarrab was released from jail following the trial after saying he had been accosted by a knife-wielding inmate who threatened to kill him for cooperating with U.S. authorities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">In a pre-sentence memorandum submitted on Zarrab\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">His attorneys said Zarrab was \u201cdestitute and heavily in debt\u201d after his plea and cooperation, adding that his assets and his family\u2019s assets have been seized by the Turkish government, costing his family\u2019s businesses \u201cmany tens of millions of dollars in lost rental income.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">\u201cReza at long last should be allowed to rebuild his life,\u201d his lawyers wrote. They said the prosecution and Turkey\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK &#8212; Reza Zarrab, a businessman who admitted conspiring with a Turkish bank to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions by trading its oil for gold will not spend any more time behind bars in a case that strained relations between the U.S. and Turkey. U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said at a hearing&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.abcnewsfe.com\/a\/1d24c806-de38-4c79-8506-987f5bb85c50\/wirestory_cd24a67e60d6747bcf13f4a1d0d332c5_16x9.jpg?w=1600","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}