NY Jury Convicts Turkish Banker in Sanctions Case

In closing arguments last month, defense attorney Victor Rocco cited Atilla’s voluntary travel here as the act of someone with a clean conscience. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Sidhardha Karamaju took another view.

“Hakan Atilla did not come to the United States because he thought he was innocent,” Karamaju scoffed. “No, backed by a powerful bank and an even more powerful government, Hakan Atilla came to the United States because he thought he was too big to jail. And he was wrong.”

Rocco, an attorney with Herrick Feinstein, characterized the prosecution’s case as something out of “The Twilight Zone” — not fitting for an “American courtroom.”

“Hakan Atilla is a blameless pawn,” and the man playing that chess piece was gold trader Reza Zarrab, said Rocco.

Outside the federal courthouse, Rocco was evasive at a press conference when asked whether his client received a fair trial.

“I think that trials are never perfect,” he said. “This trial is imperfect. That’s why we have appellate courts.”

Rocco confirmed that he will lodge that appeal after his client is sentenced on April 11.

Zarrab would have been tried alongside Atilla but opted instead to cooperate, pleading guilty to sanctions evasion and money laundering, among other felonies.

Considered the government’s star witness against Atilla, Zarrab admitted to having pledged his “economic jihad” to Iran in a letter to the country’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Defense attorney Rocco milked the phrase to impeach Zarrab’s credibility.

“That same master criminal who joined Iran’s economic jihad against the United States is now embraced by our government, as he tries to earn his way out of jail, earn his freedom by bartering the fate of another human being,” Rocco said. “And that human being is Hakan Atilla.”

Zarrab led a cushy lifestyle in Turkey, even marrying one of the country’s pop stars, but his testimony here about corruption at the highest levels of Turkey’s ruling AK Party led the Erdogan government to freeze his assets earlier this month.

The jury heard support for Zarrab’s claims from Huseyin Korkmaz, a former Istanbul police officer who had been involved in a sweeping corruption probe that was primed to take down Zarrab and other Erdogan allies.

Korkmaz faced imprisonment over the 2013 investigation, which Erdogan labeled a “judicial coup.” He fled with his family instead, arriving in the United States with an encrypted flash drive he handed to U.S. prosecutors.

Brimming with emails, letters, wiretapped conversations, banking documents and surveillance photos, Korkmaz’s flash drive formed the heart of the U.S. government’s case.

For his cooperation, Korkmaz has received $50,000 to cover rent and other expenses.

The officer’s testimony implicated Erdogan and Erdogan’s son in the bribes, but Rocco cast Korkmaz as another unreliable witness.

“Huseyin Korkmaz has fled Turkey, leaving it in political turmoil, and he’s found asylum here in the United States,” Rocco said. “He, too, is being embraced by the government for taking the law in his own hands and stealing evidence that he says he developed during his investigation.”

Rocco also heaped blame on Atilla’s accused co-conspirators, including former Halkbank director Suleyman Aslan.

As with all of Atilla’s co-defendants, Aslan remains at large in a country unlikely to extradite him to the United States. Rocco depicted him as Zarrab’s right-hand man.

“They were like two young lovers,” Rocco quipped.

But prosecutors said the sanctions-busting scheme relied on Atilla.

“Reza Zarrab was the system, and Hakan Atilla was the method,” he said.

The U.S. attorney called Atilla’s conviction a warning to others who would dodge sanctions.

“If you lie repeatedly to U.S. Treasury officials and fabricate documents – all as part of a secret scheme to smuggle billions of dollars in Iranian money past the U.S. sanctions net – as Atilla did, then you should be prepared for the consequences,” Kim said.

As of Friday, however, Kim will not be the U.S. attorney to file those charges. He will be replaced by attorney Geoffrey Berman, a law partner of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who once served as Zarrab’s legal counsel.

The geopolitical intrigue of Atilla’s trial is just as tangled in the United States as it is in Turkey.

Former President Barack Obama’s administrations doggedly resisted pressure from Turkey to throw out the case. But Trump, who has real estate in Istanbul, has been more receptive to Erdogan’s overtures.

Giuliani served as Trump’s top campaign aide before working on retainer for Zarrab, together with Republican former attorney general Michael Mukasey, another Trump ally, as his co-counsel.

Berman, the former Giuliani associate stepping in as the new U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York on Friday, will be heading the post-trial proceedings as Atilla starts his appeal.

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