Mehmet Hakan Atilla, former deputy general manager of the Turkish bank Halkbank, was found guilty today by the federal district court in Manhattan in the case that finds him accused of helping Iran evade US sanctions.
Halkbank, the Turkish state-owned lender, distanced itself by denying it had ever participated in any way in the operations that allowed Iran to circumvent the sanctions imposed by the United States and said that currently no measures an administrative or financial restriction was adopted against the bank by Washington.
Turkey, after the guilty verdict, accuses the United States of "interference in internal affairs" as the US court "interfered in Turkey's internal affairs in an unprecedented form", casting serious suspicions on the integrity of the evidence which led to the sentence. The case is based on the testimony of Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian businessman who is collaborating with the authorities against Atilla.
According to Zarrab, he himself helped Iran to use the funds deposited in the Turkish public bank Halkbank to buy gold, smuggling it to Dubai.