ANKARA: Turkey’s gold imports hit new record high despite a stunning year-on-year rise in gold imports in November 2014. The volume of gold purchased from abroad imported into Turkey for the whole year declined sharply compared to 2013 and reached only 130.9 tonnes, recent data from Borsa İstanbul (BIST) showed here the other day.
In 2013, Turkey imported 302.3 tonnes of gold, totaling $16 billion in value, a historic high for the country, skyrocketing nearly 150 percent compared to the figure from a year earlier, during which global gold prices experienced low exchange rates against world currencies. The country’s gold trade boomed for over a year while Ankara was paying Iran in gold for natural gas and oil imports in 2013; the government had imported large amounts of gold and then sent it to Tehran as payment for natural gas and oil purchases.
The gold-for-oil strategy has come under close scrutiny from government opposition and prosecutors following a corruption probe that went public in Turkey on Dec. 17, 2013. The probe saw a number of prominent businesspeople and politicians close to then-Prime Minister and now President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) being implicated in corruption — including export fraud, forgery of documents and gold smuggling. The investigation alleged that Iranian businessman of Azerbaijani origin Reza Zarrab and certain bureaucrats collaborated with Iranian businessman Babak Zanjani — who has been blacklisted by both the EU and the US government — to smuggle gold into Iran.
The primary concerns surrounding the spiked gold trade in 2013 focused on claims that Turkey exchanged nearly 60 tons of gold for several million tons of Iranian crude oil, despite its promises to observe Western sanctions on Iran’s energy sector. By using gold instead of money, Turkey has been able to skirt Western sanctions on Iran’s oil trade, particularly those pertaining to SWIFT, a global money transfer service. Turkish officials, however, have denied charges that the government trades gold for oil.
Zanjani was detained in Iran in December 2013 on accusations of exploiting privileges provided by Tehran for his own interests and the interests of certain ruling elites. His alleged partner, Zarrab, however, was released in Turkey a short time after he was arrested.
