“I’m here now,” Mr. Zarrab responded. Last week, Mr. Zarrab testified that he had been told that Mr. Erdogan gave orders in 2012, when he was prime minister, that two Turkish banks be allowed to participate in the scheme, which Mr. Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, helped orchestrate. Mr. Zarrab, responding to the prosecutor’s questions, also described the toll his cooperation had taken. Mr. Zarrab also had money wired to the inmate’s family in Africa and placed in the inmate’s commissary account, the lawsuit says. Mr. Schacht, asked why he had filed the suit the week Mr. Zarrab was testifying in the sanctions case, said the timing was coincidental and largely a factor of his being retained recently to represent the inmate and of conducting his own investigation.

Source: New York Times December 07, 2017 18:31 UTC