Moscow billions stuck in JP Morgan, and the American dilemma

A few months after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia sent huge payments to Turkey one by one. In no time, she transferred more than $ 5 billion and promised to come more.

According to what is in mediation outside, the money was transferred to the construction of Turkey’s first nuclear power station. The station, which has been in the process of establishing Russian leader Vladimir Putin for decades and Turkey President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is built and funded by Russia’s atomic congress.

Far from there, in New York, the transfer has attracted the attention of the Ministry of Justice’s investigators deposited on Wall Street supervision. why? Because two of the most prominent banks in America, Jay Morgan Chase and Citigar, treated the funds.

Russia and Turkey have been able to bypass American sanctions

The researchers found that Russia and Turkey took advantage of the nuclear project in 2022 to bypass American sanctions imposed on Russia’s central bank, according to close associates. Technocrats (experts or professionals in key positions) in Moscow have flowed billions of dollars through the US banks into a friendly state, from which the money can fund initiatives of the Russian state.

JP Morgan and Citigar are not the investigative goals, a fact that has not been previously reported. However, $ 2 billion from Russian funds is imprisoned in Jay Morgan after the US government has arrested some of the banking transfers.

In 2024, prosecutors were preparing to boycott the money on the grounds that these were income from evasion of sanctions, money laundering and bank fraud. But they were blocked towards the end of the Biden Government period, the associates said, because the White House wanted to avoid turning off Turkey, with an essential alliance but sometimes it is the first time. fight.

Various parts of the US government, such as the State Department and the National Security Council, often interfere before the Ministry of Justice takes steps that may have implications for national security or diplomatic implications. A request to freeze a case is absolutely rare, according to former prosecutors.

The Trump administration official said the US government would continue to examine its sanctions and act against people trying to evade them. The Turkish presidency referred the questions to the Ministry of Energy, which refused to comment.

A spokeswoman for Rusatum, Russia’s atomic corporation, said that all the funds allocated to the nuclear plant were used to finance the project and pay for contractors and social and other funds in Turkey. “As for the funds that have been unjustly arrested by the influence of third parties, we expect the matter to be resolved,” she said.

The cat and mouse game demonstrates the restrictions of sanctions as an economic war device, and the compromises that the US is forced to reach, trying to protect the financial system from suspicion of misuse, while taking gentle diplomatic relations.

The Department of Justice believes that the provision of bypassing the sanctions came right from above in Moscow, and that the Russian Bank’s opposite was an important part of it, they said relatives who are well -versed in the matter.

After the United States and its allies freezed the Russian Bank’s forex balance in February 2022, the bank, Alvira Navulina, said publicly that the government would challenge the move with legal claims. Behind closed doors, the central bank and a pair of companies supported by the state received guidelines from the Kremlin to find a way Russia can use the funds, the associates said.

It was a difficult task. The transfer of dollars usually requires interaction with American banks, and banks are forbidden to make transactions with Russia’s bank.

Russia found a way out, under the radar

Navulina and other Russian senior officials have been possible. He passed through entities that the West dismissed them from sanctions to make sure that global energy and food markets would not collapse.

Russia and Turkey agreed that Gazperombank, the banking arm of Russia’s state gas company, the free of sanctions, will be accompanied by $ 9 billion to the Rusatom nuclear plant, which was also not given to sanctions, the associates said. But they did not reveal that Russia’s bank secretly funded the loan, and the nuclear project was not its only goal.

For Turkey, the incentive was to fill the dollars in its financial system. Turkey’s central bank accompanied dollars from commercial banks at that time to strengthen the pound without raising interest rates against the galloping inflation.

Moscow has sought to create a reserve of dollars outside the country to fund Russian interests that have been eliminated from America’s gaze. According to Moscow’s plan, the nuclear plant can transfer dollars to Russian companies that have also had accounts at the largest bank in Turkey, Ziira, which is owned by the state. This move will remove the need to transfer funds to and from the US, and risk discovery.

Representatives of the Russian Bank, Gazprombank and Zirarat declined to comment.

In contrast to other allies in the NATO organization, Turkey did not impose sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, and instead expanded its economic relations with Moscow during a period of economic stress. Turkey distributed itself between Russia and the West during the war – sent a deadly weapon to Ukraine and at the same time. With the Kremlin to mediate the prisoner exchange in which Wall Street Journal Owen Gershkovich was released in 2024.

Dear nuclear factories funded in complicated ways may be a convenient way to hide money transferred for other reasons. Russia builds more than a dozen overseas or paying more, and has plans for many more, as part of the effort to influence through nuclear energy.

Initially, the program worked. In the summer of 2022, Gazprombank sent $ 3 billion via City to the Nuclear plant deposits in Ziira. Through Jay Morgan, more than $ 2 billion passed.

After the alarm bells in the Justice Department were operated, American officials contacted JPORGGE to block the next $ 2 billion transfer from reaching Turkey. The funds were frozen.

Will Trump return to address the issue?

Justice Ministry officials wanted to boycott the money last year through a civilian forfeiture. The White House and the State Department were concerned.

Officials feared that a complaint that involved Turkey could undermine the cooperation with the Erdogan government on any topic, from prisoners and anti-terrorism, to efforts to stabilize Syria and end the war in Gaza.

A big reason for the fear, according to some of the associates, was that the Ministry of Justice was suspected that one of Erdogan’s senior deputies, Ibrahim Kalin Intelligence Director, was involved in payments at 2022.

Calin was the presidential speaker and a powerful consultant for national security at that time. He currently leads Turkey’s main intelligence agency. Turkey’s finance minister, Nordin Navati, was also a significant part of the transfers, the associates said.

Calin and Navati declined to comment.

Bashar al-Assad’s fall in Syria has intensified Erdogan’s power in the Middle East. Then, the US feared that Turkey could send forces to an area held by Kurds and arranged with American forces.

About at that time, the White House asked the Justice Department to cease the issue.

Now the Trump administration must decide whether to renew the work on the case. In President Trump’s first term, the state -owned Turkish Bank owned by the state of American sanctions on Iran, which was a point of flare -up in relations with Erdogan.

Kate and Torigin contributed to this article