May 12, 2023
The US Supreme Court has bolstered a bid by Turkey’s state-owned lender Halkbank to avoid criminal charges in the United States for allegedly helping Iran evade American economic sanctions. The justices threw out a lower court’s ruling that had allowed the prosecution to proceed. They ordered the Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider Halkbank’s effort to dismiss the case. Halkbank, an entity owned by the Turkish government, was charged in New York in 2019 and has pleaded not guilty to bank fraud, money laundering and conspiracy charges over its alleged use of money servicers and front companies in Iran, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to evade US sanctions.