WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department imposed sanctions Friday on a Turkish bank as part of a widening campaign to intensify economic pressure on Iran, The Post has learned.
Golden Global Bank, based in Istanbul, is accused of helping move substantial payments from China for Iranian oil and directing those proceeds to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful force known as the IRGC.
Targeting a financial institution inside Turkey, a NATO ally, represents a notable escalation in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s “Operation Economic Outcast,” an effort designed to inflict enough financial strain that Iran’s regime either agrees to a peace deal or buckles under the pressure.
“Financial institutions continue to find out the hard way that we are serious about Operation Economic Outcast,” Bessent said in announcing Friday’s move.
“While we hope no more banks will need to be sanctioned, that ultimately depends on how quickly the international community comes to its senses and ceases support of the murderous Iranian regime,” he added.
“We know who you are, we know where you are, and we will continue to take action together with our allies and partners until we have buried the head of the Iranian snake.”
Founded in 2019, Golden Global Bank describes itself as “Turkey’s first investment bank that conducts all its activities in accordance with interest-free finance principles,” referring to the Islamic prohibition on charging interest.
Golden Global is Turkey’s 35th-largest bank and holds less than one-tenth of 1% of the market, according to financial data site TheBanks.EU, which lists the lender as controlling the equivalent of $517 million in assets.
“This bank has been warned for years,” said Gene Lange, acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
“We have repeatedly warned these entities, and today’s action makes clear that those warnings have consequences. This is a message to everyone else: the secretary means every single word he said at the press conference announcing Operation Economic Outcast.”
Although it bills itself as a professional outfit, the Treasury Department determined the bank was set up as part of Iran’s shadowy “rahbar” network of front organizations to “transfer oil revenues from China to Turkey, where it could then be converted to cash and gold by rahbar money exchangers,” according to a document explaining the action.
The department said that the bank and its subsidiaries “facilitated tens of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and provide the Iranian regime with key correspondent banking access that allows it to move its funds internationally.”
It’s believed to be the first time the US has sanctioned a bank in Turkey, though federal prosecutors in Manhattan in 2019 charged Halkbank, the country’s fourth-largest, with allegedly helping Iran evade sanctions. That case ended in a legal settlement this year.
The sanctions disconnect Golden Global from the international financial system.
The Treasury Department said the move “severed the Iranian regime’s critical financial lifelines” in Turkey.
Whether the Turkish government is taking corresponding action to seize the bank’s assets was not immediately clear.
Foreign governments often get a heads up from the US and try to stall or derail sanctions plans. It’s unclear if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke with President Trump — though the sanctions went ahead as planned.
Other Treasury Department actions as part of Operation Economic Outcast have targeted financial institutions in the United Arab Emirates that allegedly serviced Iranian clients.
