This U.S. Attorney Is Kind Of A Big Deal In Turkey Now
Preet Bharara’s Twitter following has absolutely exploded since he arrested a businessman with ties to the president of Turkey.
Preet Bharara needs to update his business cards. Aside from being the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — renowned for slaying political dragons — he is now a bona fide Twitter celebrity in Turkey.
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That's because Bharara has had the fortitude to prosecute this guy, Reza Zarrab, for money laundering and evading sanctions the United States has in place on Iran.
According to the news release Bharara's office sent out on Tuesday, Zarrab and two others were indicted for "engaging in hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions on behalf of the Government of Iran and other Iranian entities, which were barred by United States sanctions, laundering the proceeds of those illegal transactions, and defrauding several financial institutions by concealing the true nature of these transactions."
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What could explain this explosion in popularity? The answer lies at the feet of former-Turkish prime minister turned president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
You see, Zarrab was at the center of a huge scandal in Turkey back in 2013. He was accused of bribing members of Erdogan's cabinet into looking the other way in yet another scheme involving money laundering and dodging Iran sanctions.
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