According to the news by Can Kamiloğlu from VoA Turkish, Turkish state lender Halkbank’s petition to the New York Second District Court of Appeal to have the Supreme Court to review the court’s decision that it could be tried in the USA, has been accepted. Additionally, Halkbank requested the suspension of the judicial process in the Reza Zarrab case until the legal process in the Constitutional Court is completed. The court announced that Halkbank’s application was accepted.
LEGAL PROCESS HAS BEEN STOPPED
In its statement made via the electronic judicial data base yesterday, the Second Regional Court of Appeals stated that Halkbank’s application to revert back to the Supreme Court to exercise its right of appeal was accepted. With this decision, Halkbank was once again granted the right to defend itself if the US High Court accepts the application. The decision also emphasized that all stages regarding the submission of Halkbank’s petition of appeal to the Constitutional Court and that the judicial process in the lower court will be completely suspended until the application is decided.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE SUPPORTED THE APPEAL
In the decision, it was stated that the Attorney General’s Office of the Southern District of New York also supported Halkbank’s application to the Constitutional Court. The Second District Court of Appeal in New York also forwarded this decision to senior judges Amalya L. Kearse, Jose A. Cabranes and Joseph F. Bianco, who previously handled Halkbank’s case in the Supreme Court.
ANALYSIS
This is major victory for Halkbank’s legal team, whose objective seems to be to delay the verdict until Trump takes over and Erdogan has a chance to appeal to him to work out an amicable solution to the potential penalties for Halkbank and possibly Turkey for sanctions violations. While there is no presumption Halkbank is guilty, Reza Zarrab’s devastatingly detailed testimony of how bank officers aided him in laundering Iranian funds raises the prospect of such a verdict. Halkbank claims in this case the penalty will not exceed $1bn, while experts state –judging by cases against other non-USA lenders that it could go as high as $9 bn.
Furthermore, a guilty verdict will probably trigger probes about Erdogan’s role in the money laundering scheme, who openly praised Reza Zarrab as a genius businessman. There have also been news reports that two other major lenders had been used by Zarrab to funnel funds to Iran through foreign subsidiaries.
Trump will probably not attempt to influence the courts to dismiss the case, but it is the Treasury Department which arranges how penalties will be structured. If Trump intercedes on behalf of Turkey, the negative ramifications can be whittled down to manageable proportions, while Erdogan and other implicated lenders will not be probed.
ParaAnaliz, PATurkey
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