Turkey's Halkbank says US agrees to end lawsuit over Iran sanctions

Turkey's Halkbank said it had reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice to settle a years-long criminal case against the state-run bank over violating sanctions on Iran.

Under the terms of a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), the bank "will not admit to any criminal offences, nor will it pay any judicial or administrative fines", the bank said on X late Monday.

The move effectively seeks to draw a line under a case that has been a source of long-running tension between Washington and Ankara.

US prosecutors hit Halkbank with criminal charges in 2019 over suspicions it was involved in a years-long scheme to launder billions of dollars worth of Iranian oil and natural gas proceeds in violation of sanctions on Tehran.

"Following the submission of a compliance report", Halkbank and the US attorney's office in New York will submit a joint letter to the court "requesting the dismissal of the case," the statement said.

"With the court's approval, the criminal case against our bank in the US... will be concluded," it added.

The Turkish bank said it had been informed by the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which is responsible for enforcing sanctions, "that it has closed the administrative proceedings against Halkbank without taking any further action".

Shares surge

Halkbank said it was expecting the development to "positively impact" the bank's foreign funding opportunities and access to international markets.

State news agency Anadolu quoted a letter from US Attorney Jay Clayton which said the Justice Department believed resolving the charges against Halkbank via the DPA was "in the best interests of the United States".

He said the "national security and foreign policy interests furthered by the Agreement are unique and extraordinary", mentioning Ankara's help in securing both the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza and the ceasefire in the war-torn Palestinian territory.

A hearing to discuss the DPA is due to take place in New York on Wednesday, he added.

The DPA filing prompted Halkbank's shares to surge around 10 percent at the open on Istanbul's BIST 100, Turkey's main stock exchange, and by 1200 GMT they were still trading 5.57 percent higher.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly rejected the charges against the bank, insisting that Ankara did not violate the US embargo on Iran and accusing his political rivals of being behind the case.

There had been signs that US President Donald Trump was willing to end the long-running legal case, which was discussed in talks with Erdogan at the White House in September.

Speaking to reporters a month later, Erdogan said he had been assured by Trump that the complicated legal problem with Halkbank was "over".

The US Department of Justice had slapped Halkbank with six counts of fraud, money-laundering and sanctions offences in what it had referred to as one of the most serious sanctions-busting cases it had seen.

Court documents said the laundered funds were used to buy gold, while the transactions were disguised as food and medicine purchases in order to fall under a humanitarian exemption to the sanctions.

Multiple individuals have already been found guilty in the case, including Mehmet Hakan Atilla, a deputy director general of the bank, who was convicted in 2018.

He was jailed for a year, then released and greeted as a hero upon his return to Turkey.