February 18, 2022
Reza Zarrab, an Iranian who has spent most of his life in Turkey, is now in the United States awaiting a call to testify in court about Turkish bank operations helping Iran evade sanctions. An article by the Miami Herald says Zarrab is living quite lavishly in Florida, not like someone described as funneling billions of dollars to the Islamic Republic in one of the biggest sanctions evasion schemes ever.
Zarrab, now 38, was arrested in 2016 for violating US sanctions on Iran. He pleaded guilty to reduced charges in an agreement to testify against others. So, he was released on bail in 2018 and won’t be sentenced until after he testifies.
According to an investigation by the Miami Herald and other media, Zarrab lives in a $3.6 million high-rise condo and is making investments in thoroughbreds and equestrian centers around Miami.
Zarrab was arrested when he landed at Miami’s airport bringing his wife and daughter to the US on a Now Ruz holiday. His wife, one of Turkey’s most prominent singers, returned home and divorced him.
He was charged with money laundering for helping Iran evade sanctions. US prosecutors offered a conservative estimate that his network moved at least $20 billion from 2010 to 2015 alone.
He agreed to testify as part of a plea deal to avoid 130 years in prison. He’s still receiving wire transfers from Turkey and buying thoroughbred horses, the Miami Herald reported, though now he does so using fake identities. Department of Justice officials declined to comment to the paper about whether they were aware of Zarrab’s activities.
The Miami Herald alleged that Zarrab, who was accused of executing the biggest money-laundering scheme to Iran in US history, had obtained a driver’s license and a work permit under the name of “Aaron Goldsmith.”
“He is using the name ‘Richard Ferrari’ while participating in the riding races. He is also using ‘Richard Kaplan’ from time to time,” the US newspaper said.
Overweight in his days in Turkey, Zarrab now seems quite lithe. Experts said the Swiss-made Richard Mille watch he was wearing in a recent photo cost “some hundred thousand dollars.”
A joint investigation by OCCRP, Law & Crime and the Miami Herald found that Zarrab remains connected to his former criminal network and has received multiple wire transfers from Turkey.
Turkey has already seized some of Zarrab’s assets, and he is expected to forfeit more to the US when he is sentenced. That won’t happen until after the trial of Turkish state bank Halkbank, however, and it’s unclear when that will be.
“I’ve long been concerned with how the Justice Department handled this case, and the appearance of political interference on behalf of Turkey influencing the department’s decision-making,’’ said US Senate Finance Committee Chairman Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.
“This was the largest sanctions-evasion scheme in US history, and the possibility that the US financial system is being used to facilitate improper transactions for Reza Zarrab and other co-conspirators implicated in the scheme deserves the immediate attention of US officials.”
Just over a week after Zarrab’s 2017 plea deal, corporate records show that a key member of his inner circle, Iranian businessman Amir Fathrazi, started a new Turkish company.
Zarrab was not yet 20 when he first partnered with Fathrazi in 2003, according to records for their Turkish jewelry business.
A decade later, in 2013, Fathrazi established a gold refining business in Iran with Zarrab’s father, Hossein. Three months earlier, the elder Zarrab had been fined $9.1 million by the US in relation to a money exchange in the UAE, which prosecutors later identified as integral to Reza Zarrab’s money laundering scheme.
Zarrab’s most famous attorney has been Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and lawyer for ex-President Donald Trump.
In the months before Zarrab’s plea deal, Giuliani shuttled between Washington and Turkey’s capital in an attempt to broker a prisoner swap that would have torpedoed the case. That failed effort fueled multiple reports that Trump tried to interfere with the Halkbank money laundering case as a favor to Turkish President Recep Erdogan, whom ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton called one of the “dictators he [Trump] liked.”
Zarrab’s three-bedroom Miami condo has been offered to rent at $10,000 per month in the past and is now listed for sale at $3.65 million.
Outside of the condo, much of Zarrab’s Florida life revolves around horses. Multiple racing association websites show he has ridden in several cross-country endurance races in the state and as far away as Montana, competing under the alias Richard Ferrari.
Zarrab has bought several horses in Florida, including Sonata MF, a sleek $300,000 show horse. In August, photographs showed Zarrab ringside when Sonata MF won a dressage national championship in an arena not far from Chicago.
The Miami Herald also reports that Zarrab lived for eight months in Davie, Florida, sharing an upscale home with a 29-year-old professional horse trainer, whom OCCRP did not name, citing her safety. On May 13, 2021, the woman contacted Davie police to report that “she is concerned that something might happen to her because of Reza.”
The woman told officers she met the man she knew as Richard Ferrari in mid-2020. They were soon living together in a sprawling five-bedroom home with a pool.
The relationship soured in February when she “came across Reza’s personal identification and learned of his real name,” a Davie police officer wrote in a report. “She then did some research and learned Reza had been arrested in the past for money laundering and other charges.”
After the breakup and Zarrab’s move back to his Miami condo, the woman twice called police to their old home to investigate suspicious activity or noises, and told officers that she believed Zarrab was stalking her. She declined to comment to the Miami Herald for its article.