Turkey said Wednesday that the state-owned Halkbank, whose chief executive was rounded up in a sweeping corruption investigation, would continue to handle payments for energy imports from neighboring Iran.
Turkey
said
Wednesday that the state-owned Halkbank, whose chief executive was rounded up
in a sweeping corruption investigation, would continue to handle payments for
energy imports from neighboring
Iran
.
"The Iranian state has accounts with Halkbank. We deposit the payments for
the oil and gas to these accounts," Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan said
in an interview with Bloomberg HT television.
"Halkbank will keep on carrying out this task," he said.
The bank's chief executive, Suleyman Aslan, is one of dozens of top Turkish
businessmen targeted by police in a corruption scandal engulfing the government
of Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan.
He is charged with bribery after police reportedly found $4.5 million secreted
in shoe boxes in his home.
Halkbank is under fire for being involved in gold sales to
Iran
in
return for energy imports to
Turkey
that
dodge international sanctions on
Iran
.
Turkey
,
which has little of its own energy resources, remains one of the largest
customers for Iranian oil and a major buyer of its natural gas, but denies that
it has broken sanctions.
Turkey
is
also planning to use Halbank as an intermediary for oil payments to the Iraqi
region of
Kurdistan
.
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