(Opinion) Utah case exposes more dirt on Turkey’s Erdoğan
Abdullah Bozkurt
Another fraud scheme that extends to the United States has implicated the corrupt Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in what is seen as a potentially devastating blow to the entrenched political machinery set up and sustained by the autocratic Islamist leader who governs a nation of 80 million with an iron grip. The revelations place Erdoğan in the midst of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe with connections to an international organized crime network.
ErdoÄŸan was already identified in an Iran sanction-busting scheme in a federal case that wrapped up in New York earlier this year with the conviction of senior Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who had worked for Turkish state lender Halkbank. Now, a federal grand jury in Utah returned a sealed indictment on Aug. 1, 2018 naming ErdoÄŸan as the leader of foreign country who met with highly controversial businesspeople in California and Utah in what was claimed to be a major money laundering and tax fraud case.
According to the indictment that was unsealed on Aug. 24, 2018, Jacob Ortell Kingston, the chief executive officer, and Isaiah Kingston, the chief financial officer of Washakie Renewable Energy (WRE), a Utah-based biodiesel company, defrauded the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by filing false claims for tax credits and obtained over $511 million in renewable fuel tax credits that were designed to increase the amount of renewable fuel used and produced in the US. Lev Aslan Dermen (aka Levon Termendzhyan), owner of California-based fuel company NOIL Energy Group with links to a transnational criminal enterprise, is also identified as a partner in this grand scheme. From 2010 through 2016, they fabricated documents and rotated products within the US as well as overseas to make it appear that they were engaging in real trade to qualify for the tax credits.
Read more at: https://www.turkishminute.com/2018/09/13/opinion-utah-case-exposes-more-dirt-on-turkeys-erdogan/
Amazing stuff, I knew some of it about the bank, Halkbank. Why isn't this in the news more?
Utah has a few questionable types of companies there, I guess, they give them tax breaks.
Edit On: Story in Salt Lake Tribune says some of the same things as above,
this is in the Mueller Investigation.... etc.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/09/10/strange-winding-fraud/
