In December 2013 an investigation involved Reza Zarrab, Iranian billionaire Babak Zanjani, the sons of three ministers (Erdoğan Bayraktar, Muammer Güler and Zafer Çağlayan) in the Turkish government and Egemen Bağış revealed a system to help Iran bypass US sanctions against the country concerning the SWIFT payment system, in a scheme based on Turkish public bank Halkbank, whereby money was transferred to front companies in China and Turkey, and gold bought with that money transferred to Iran via Dubai.
Halkbank Deputy Chief Executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who was in connection with Zarrab, was also arrested in the United States in March 2017 with similar offenses.
[5] Bloomberg has reported that Iran used the state-run Turkish Bank Turkiye Halk Bankasi to process hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenue.
[6] Prosecutors have noted that Zarrab has close ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and donated $4.5 million to a charity founded by his wife Emine Erdoğan.
[8] Mehmet Hakan Atilla, deputy chief executive officer at state-owned Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS, accused of conspiring with Zarrab to launder money and violate sanctions on Iran, funneling Iranian funds illegally by using the U.S. banking system.