Former Turkish minister indicted on charges of evading Iran sanctions

A former member of Turkey's cabinet and the ex-head of a state-owned bank are among four people newly indicted by the US on suspicion of attempting to evade sanctions on Iran. In a statement on Wednesday, the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York said that ex-economy minister Mehmet Zafer Caglayan is among those facing charges including conspiring to conduct hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions for Iran, defrauding several financial institutions and lying to the US government about the transactions. Caglayan is accused of helping orchestrate the scheme while he served in the cabinet of President Tayyip Erdogan. The indictments are linked to the investigation of a Turkish-Iranian financier arrested in 2016 on suspicion of running a money laundering operation for Iran. Ankara has officially protested the financier's arrest.