US court upholds Turkish banker’s conviction in Iran sanctions case

A Turkish banker was properly convicted of helping Iran evade US sanctions in a case that strained relations with Turkey, a federal appeals panel says Monday.

The ruling by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan concludes that Mehmet Hakan Atilla received a fair trial after he was arrested in 2017 during a business trip to the United States.

A three-judge panel says there was sufficient evidence to support the jury’s guilty verdict, including wiretapped conversations and hundreds of documents establishing that “Atilla was a knowing participant in the sanctions evasion scheme that involved routing hundreds of millions of dollars through the US financial system.”

Atilla’s arrest and prosecution drew an outcry from high-level Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called Atilla’s conviction on five charges a “scandalous verdict.”

The prosecution attracted new attention recently with the publication of a book by John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.

In the book, Bolton claims that Trump assured Erdogan in 2018 that he would “take care of things” regarding a probe of a Turkish firm believed to be Turkey’s state-run Halkbank. The bank has since been criminally charged and pleaded not guilty to evading US sanctions. A March 2021 trial date has been set.

Atilla was an executive at Halkbank when he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. The sentence was far below the life term recommended by US probation authorities and the 20 years urged by prosecutors.

He has since returned to Turkey. A message was left Monday seeking comment from his Washington-based attorney.

— AP