NEW YORK (AP) — Reza Zarrab, a businessman who admitted conspiring with a Turkish bank to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions by trading its oil for gold, was sentenced Tuesday to time already served after cooperating with investigators in a case that strained relations between the U.S. and Turkey.
Zarrab has testified that he paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Turkey to facilitate the sanctions-busting scheme. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, publicly disparaged the corruption allegations as an American plot to “blackmail” Turkey, and lobbied the administrations of three U.S. presidents to halt the case.
President Donald Trump — who has had a warm relationship with Erdogan — allowed the case to go forward in his first term. But this year, Trump’s Justice Department dropped its longtime effort to prosecute Halkbank, a state-run institution indicted in 2019 on charges that it helped Iran move $20 billion in sanctioned oil revenue.
Zarrab was released from jail following the 2017 trial after saying he was accosted by a knife-wielding inmate who threatened to kill him for cooperating with U.S. authorities. Before he was sentenced Tuesday, he spoke briefly to thank U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman and the government for its efforts to protect him and his family.
Prosecutors in New York credited him with providing “truthful, complete and reliable” assistance to investigators. By doing so, he avoided the possibility of decades in prison. He pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy, bank fraud and money laundering.
Zarrab's sentencing ends an operatic legal and diplomatic saga that was closely watched by the Turkish public.
Born in Iran, he moved to Turkey with his family as a toddler. He was initially arrested in 2013 as part of a sweeping anticorruption probe overseen by Turkish law enforcement officials, but was quickly freed. Many of the police officers involved in the investigation were then purged from their jobs after Erdogan claimed it was a foreign plot orchestrated by the U.S. government.
Three years later, Zarrab was arrested in Miami after flying there for a trip to Disney World with his wife at the time, Turkish pop singer and TV personality Ebru Gundes, and their then-4-year-old daughter.
Zarrab hired former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to seek a diplomatic solution to the case. Erdogan publicly demanded Zarrab’s release.
Then, in 2017, came a twist: Zarrab secretly pleaded guilty to the charges, and appeared as a surprise witness at the U.S. trial of Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla.
Zarrab testified he paid millions of dollars in bribes to government and banking officials in Turkey to help Iranians and their government evade U.S. sanctions.
And he said that Erdogan, while he was Turkey’s prime minister in 2012, had given approval for two Turkish banks to participate in sham gold trades to enable Iran to get access to oil and gas revenue.
Atilla, who maintained that he was innocent, was convicted and sentenced to 32 months in prison. At the time, Erdogan called the verdict “scandalous.”
In a pre-sentence memorandum submitted on Zarrab’s behalf, his lawyers said his life had changed dramatically since the trial. He got divorced from Gundes in 2021 and married a former Turkish national swimmer last year.
His attorneys said Zarrab was “destitute and heavily in debt” after his plea and cooperation, adding that his assets and his family’s assets have been seized by the Turkish government, costing his family’s businesses “many tens of millions of dollars in lost rental income.”
After his guilty plea, they added, Zarrab forfeited a $288,000 boat and $88,000 in cash to the U.S. government. He claimed he is $50 million in debt. Berman said the boat and cash was sufficient forfeiture and he declined to impose restitution or a fine.
“Reza at long last should be allowed to rebuild his life,” his lawyers wrote. They said the prosecution and Turkey’s labeling of him as a traitor continue to haunt him, spoiling his efforts to build a horse farm in the U.S. and to appear in public without someone recognizing him and outing him on social media.
FILE - In this Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2013 photo, Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, who is charged currently in the U.S. for evading sanctions on Iran, is surrounded by the media members as he arrives at a courthouse in Istanbul, in a separate case against him. (Depo Photos via AP, File)
After her grandmother’s house in Caracas narrowly survived last month’s devastating back-to-back earthquakes, Alessandra Izaguirre was desperate to help Venezuela.
“Seeing my grandma and all these people affected made me feel like I had to do something, even if it was from the U.S.," said the 18-year-old, who has spent the last couple weeks preparing food for volunteers at the Doral, Florida headquarters of the nonprofit Global Empowerment Mission.
Izaguirre is one of thousands of people who have participated in an exceptionally large grassroots humanitarian effort based at GEM, supported by donations from across the U.S. and beyond and still going strong nearly three weeks after the catastrophe.
Hundreds of volunteers still show up each day at GEM's warehouses in Doral, where about half the population is of Venezuelan descent. They sort donated supplies –– curated to address the latest needs –– and prepare them for transport to Caracas on daily flights.
GEM's system, facilitated by the U.S. State Department, has given members of the Venezuelan diaspora and others an outlet to support the ongoing crisis, and a trusted mechanism to send aid amid widespread concern about theft and corruption on the part of Venezuelan officials.
“Whatever we can get to the Venezuelan public is what counts,” said Izaguirre.
The effort also underscores the stunning dynamic shift between the U.S. and Venezuela since President Donald Trump ordered then-Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s capture in an early morning raid on Jan 3. With military personnel again on the ground, the U.S. has assumed a response role that would have been unimaginable before January, when Trump said the U.S. would “run” the country and seized control of its oil exports.
“This is a whole different animal,” said GEM founder and president Michael Capponi, who was denied entry to Venezuela while trying to deliver aid during the reign of Maduro, who long rejected humanitarian help, equating it to foreign intervention. “We land a private plane, it gets unloaded by U.S. soldiers, it goes in a truck we pay for and to a warehouse that we completely control. It doesn’t touch the hands of the Venezuelan government.”
The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes struck 39 seconds apart on June 24, killing at least 4,500 people with thousands more still missing. They destroyed 190 buildings and damaged over 850, Venezuelan officials said, leaving 17,000 displaced and ravaging critical infrastructure providing electricity, clean water and sanitation.
GEM's headquarters became a donation collection point almost immediately. Some donors were initially skeptical that aid could reach those who needed it without being stolen or misused by a notoriously corrupt government, Capponi said. After GEM made its first successful aid distribution, the movement grew bigger than he'd seen in decades of global response.
Companies like Goya, Walmart and Amazon contribute supplies while professional sports teams have donated funds. But much of the aid is still amassed from thousands of individuals' contributions.
“They’re going to Walmart with their credit card, buying 15 cans of food and bringing it in a shopping bag,” said Capponi. “It doesn’t sound like a lot, but when it’s 2,000 people... it’s an enormous amount of aid.”
Lines to drop off aid at GEM have at times been so long police had to help manage traffic. Supplies arrive from across North America: Two brothers drove a U-Haul of goods from Canada. Another group arrived from Mexico. Trucks have rolled in from Nevada, Texas and California.
As many as 1,000 volunteers across three warehouses sort and pack. They fill pallets with essentials like diapers, and assemble individual care packages with enough sustenance and hygiene items to last two people about five days. They also tuck in notes of encouragement: “Te queremos Venezuela,” one reads. “We love you, Venezuela.”
GEM aims to deliver at least 100,000 care packages monthly for the next three-to-six months, while also addressing upcoming needs, like longer term housing.
Volunteers have taken vacations from work to put in hours at the warehouses, said Billy Richardson, director of U.S. logistics. Others arrive after work. “We almost have to kick them out at the end of the day,” Richardson said.
Mariela Vila showed up because she remembers how affected she was when Hurricane Maria pummeled her homeland of Puerto Rico in 2017. “The Latino community in general gathered together to help Puerto Rico, and that made me feel really well,” said Vila, 25, who has worked full-day shifts at GEM since the effort began. “So I felt the need to help Venezuela.”
Nearly one million pounds (454,000 kilograms) of supplies have been deployed so far from GEM headquarters to its recently leased Caracas warehouses. GEM collaborates with local nonprofits and trusted community members to organize distributions in the hardest hit areas, often twice daily.
But it is the U.S. State Department that facilitates the shipments with the Venezuelan government, making it possible for GEM to operate in the country, even getting help from the U.S. military. On Saturday, U.S. Marines maneuvered an amphibious landing craft onto a Venezuelan beach and unloaded GEM packages that were then passed to 2,000 people lined up for aid.
Partnerships with GEM and other nonprofits allow the U.S. to tap into existing logistics and donation mechanisms, a State Department spokesperson told The Associated Press, adding that the effort with GEM leverages “the Venezuelan American diaspora and private partners who want to donate.”
Several other U.S.-based humanitarian groups told The Associated Press they also have been able to operate without interference from Venezuelan officials. Some depend on collaborations with established local nonprofits.
Despite the U.S. response, questions remain over its influence in Venezuela, especially while it controls billions of dollars in oil revenue.
“There are a lot of transparency questions that linger on the use of that fund in a moment in which Venezuelans really need that money to be used for the protection of Venezuelans,” said Laura Cristina Dib, Venezuela program director at the human rights organization Washington Office on Latin America.
John M. Barrett, U.S. charge d’affairs for Venezuela, told reporters last week that revenue from Venezuelan oil production, currently controlled by the U.S. Treasury, is being made available for relief efforts.
Asked for further details, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. was "supporting the Venezuelan interim government’s budgetary operations, improving Venezuela’s liquidity and access to capital during the recovery," adding that the U.S. has contributed over $386 million to earthquake response independent of the oil revenue.
In the coastal city of Maiquetía last week, Yoniel Reyes sat inside a tent, examining the contents of a GEM package he’d just received during an aid distribution, packed and sealed 1,300 miles away in Doral. There were instant meals, bottles of water, canned food, hydration powder and hygiene kits.
“I never imagined I would be receiving aid from the U.S.,” said Reyes. “We Venezuelans are thankful, very thankful.”
——
Associated Press videojournalist Juan Pablo Arraez contributed to this report from Maiquetía, Venezuela.
——
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Relief workers unload U.S. humanitarian aid for people affected by the earthquakes in La Guaira, Venezuela, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
People affected by the earthquakes carry U.S. humanitarian aid after receiving it in La Guaira, Venezuela, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
People affected by the earthquakes carry U.S. humanitarian aid after receiving it in La Guaira, Venezuela, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
Lisa Galindez calls on other volunteers to help pack baby items at the Global Empowerment Mission Venezuela relief donation site Tuesday, June 30, 2026, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
