The US won: the infamous Korkmaz, a friend of Soylu, will be extradited to Washington, not Ankara

Sezgin Baran Korkmaz, the notorious Turkish businessman currently in custody in Austria, will be extradited to the US on July 15.

Prosecutor Silke Enzlmüller from the press department of the Prosecutor’s Office in the Austrian city of Wels told Anadolu Agency that Korkmaz will be transferred to the capital Vienna on Friday and then to the US. The Austrian Ministry of Defense decided on June 15 that Korkmaz will be extradited to the US on the grounds that the first of the crimes he is accused of was committed in the US and the majority of the victims are located there.

This seems to be the end of the serial dispute between the US and Turkey over the extradition of Korkmaz, who is a strong card against the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in all matters of money laundering and drug trafficking.

What happened

On 17 May 2021, a Turkish court in Istanbul ordered the arrest of Korkmaz on charges of money laundering through companies linked to him and several other individuals, including three foreign nationals.

Korkmaz arrested in June in Wells, which is about 260 km from Vienna, and Turkey had started extradition proceedings with the Austrian authorities. In December, authorities arrested 10 executives working at Korkmaz’s companies after Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Commission (MASAK) said the companies were used for money laundering. The Turkish Ministry of Justice previously filed a request with the Vienna Criminal Court for Korkmaz’s extradition.

As Capital.gr had broadcast at the time, the case involves allegations that Utah-based Washakie Renewable Energy (WRE) combined $470 million in tax refunds, $140 million of which was allegedly sent to Turkey. Jacob and Isaiah Kingston, also known as the “Mormon Brothers in Crime,” and Turkish-speaking, Armenian-born Levon (Aslan) Dermen were indicted in 2018, but both brothers, as well as other members of the Kingston family, changed their minds. camp, leaving Dermen as the sole defendant in the case, in a move very reminiscent of the scandal involving illegal gold trading and circumvention of US sanctions on Iran starring Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab. The testimony of Jacob, the founder and CEO of WRE, who is now a state witness in the case, lasted a week. According to the court proceedings, Jacob gave a more detailed account of the hundreds of millions of dollars sent over the years to Turkish businessman Sezgin Baran Korkmaz and his company, SBK Holding, in Turkey.

The infamous Turkish godfather Sedat Peker claimed that on December 5, Korkmaz and Soylu met at the interior ministry in Ankara for two hours and the minister warned Korkmaz that an investigation had been launched against him. Korkmaz left the country the next day. An arrest warrant has been issued for Korkmaz as part of a $132 million money laundering investigation.

Korkmaz used the money to finance a lavish lifestyle, including private jetsyachts and luxury villas, US prosecutors say.

One of these areas is Venezuela’s efforts to lift sanctions and the role of Korkmaz in this mechanism. The Turkish businessman previously bought a private jet with funding from the US government and the aircraft was used by Venezuela’s oil minister, Tarek EL Aisami to fly from Istanbul to Moscow on February 23, 2019, and from there back to Caracas. In 2019, the US Department of Justice released an indictment against El Aissami, charging him with drug trafficking. El Aissami was in Turkey for a month in January 2019 when he met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In addition to these, Korkmaz is also linked to a case of money laundering on behalf of Hezbollah in the Congo.

Korkmaz’s name also appeared in the Pandora Papers. Among the names on the list are Can Nahum and his wife Nese Nahum, who transferred their shares in Hexagon Danışmanlık consultancy in 2019 and Kıraça Holding in 2020 to Korkmaz.

Petros Kranias