U.S. Can Pursue Turk Accused of Conspiring to Violate Iran Sanctions
A federal judge in Manhattan refused on Monday to dismiss an indictment against a Turkish gold trader, Reza Zarrab, who has been jailed in New York and is awaiting trial on charges that he conspired to violate United States sanctions on Iran.
Prosecutors
have accused Mr. Zarrab, 33, of facilitating millions of dollars in
transactions on behalf of Iran and other sanctioned entities through the
use of false documentation and front companies. He has also been
charged with conspiracies to commit money laundering and bank fraud.
Mr.
Zarrab’s lawyers had asked the judge, Richard M. Berman of Federal
District Court, to dismiss the indictment, calling the government’s case
“unprecedented” and “a prosecutorial overreach of the first order.”
Judge
Berman, in rejecting the defense arguments, ruled that the indictment
clearly set forth the required elements for the charges.“The dismissal
of an indictment is an ‘extraordinary remedy’ reserved only for
extremely limited circumstances implicating fundamental rights,” he
wrote.
The case of Mr. Zarrab, who has pleaded not guilty, has been closely watched in Turkey, where in 2013 he was detained by the authorities during a corruption investigation of businessmen with close links to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then the country’s prime minister and now its president.
Recently,
Mr. Erdogan has said that he had raised Mr. Zarrab’s case with Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. during talks at the United Nations,
according to Turkish news reports. Mr. Erdogan has also said there were
“malicious intentions” in the prosecution of Mr. Zarrab, according to
the reports.
In
seeking dismissal of the charges, Mr. Zarrab’s lawyers argued that the
United States sanctions laws were “limited to U.S. persons and exports
from the U.S.” The prosecutor’s efforts to extend those laws in Mr.
Zarrab’s case, the defense said, “is not only unjustified and a due
process violation, it is a dangerous extension of U.S. law that should
not be allowed.”
The office of Preet Bharara,
the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, had
asked the judge to deny the defense motion. “What arguably is
unprecedented about this case,” the prosecutor’s office wrote, “is the
scope, complexity and reach of the defendant’s own unlawful scheme, and
his level of access to both Iranian and Turkish government officials and
to banks to arrange and facilitate that scheme.”
Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer for Mr. Zarrab, and Mr. Bharara’s office each had no comment on the judge’s ruling.
Source: nytime
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