{"id":1669920,"date":"2022-10-03T10:06:24","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T14:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1669920"},"modified":"2022-10-03T10:07:18","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T14:07:18","slug":"u-s-supreme-court-to-hear-turkish-lender-halkbanks-bid-to-avoid-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/u-s-supreme-court-to-hear-turkish-lender-halkbanks-bid-to-avoid-charges\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Supreme Court to hear Turkish lender Halkbank\u2019s bid to avoid charges"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fu-s-supreme-court-to-hear-turkish-lender-halkbanks-bid-to-avoid-charges%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1669920&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>By Nate Raymond<\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) \u2013     The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear Turkish state-owned lender Halkbank\u2019s bid to avoid criminal charges of money laundering, bank fraud and conspiracy for allegedly helping Iran evade economic sanctions in a case that has strained American relations with NATO ally Turkey.<\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1663871513696-art-1\">\n<\/div>\n<p>The justices took up Halkbank\u2019s appeal of a lower court\u2019s decision rejecting the bank\u2019s contention that it was immune from U.S. prosecution under a 1976 law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which limits the jurisdiction of American courts over lawsuits against foreign countries, because the business is majority-owned by Turkey\u2019s government.<\/p>\n<p>Federal prosecutors in New York in 2019 brought charges against Halkbank, accusing it of participating in a scheme to launder about $20 billion of Iranian oil and natural gas proceeds in violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran.<\/p>\n<p>The bank pleaded not guilty to charges of bank fraud, money laundering and conspiracy over allegations that it used money servicers and front companies in Turkey, Iran and the United Arab Emirates to evade sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has called the U.S. government\u2019s decision to charge the bank an \u201cugly, unlawful\u201d step and has pushed for the case to be dropped.<\/p>\n<p>The charges stemmed from an investigation that first became public with the 2016 arrest of Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader who prosecutors said had close ties with Erdogan. Zarrab pleaded guilty and testified at trial against Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a Halkbank executive who was arrested in 2017 and subsequently convicted of helping evade U.S. sanctions and sentenced to 32 months in prison.<\/p>\n<p>After being indicted, Halkbank sought the dismissal of the charges on the grounds that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act rendered it immune from prosecution as an arm of Turkey\u2019s government. A trial judge and the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, finding that Halkbank could be prosecuted because its alleged misconduct involved commercial activity not covered by sovereign immunity.<\/p>\n<p>Halkbank appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, calling the prosecution \u201cunprecedented\u201d and saying that the 2nd Circuit\u2019s ruling \u201cgreen lights future indictments of any sovereign state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Justice Department countered that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act addresses only civil cases, not criminal prosecutions, and even if it did, the case fell within the law\u2019s exceptions for cases involving commercial activities.<\/p>\n<p>A trial was delayed awaiting action by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oann.com\/uncategorized\/u-s-supreme-court-to\/attachment\/file-photo-people-walk-by-a-branch-of-halkbank-in\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI920N0-BASEIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2022binary_LYNXMPEI920N0-BASEIMAGE\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Nate Raymond WASHINGTON (Reuters) \u2013 The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear Turkish state-owned lender Halkbank\u2019s bid to avoid criminal charges of money laundering, bank fraud and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1669920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1669920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1669920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1669920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1669920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}