Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, founded Halkbank in 1933 to provide cheap credit easily to small business owners and large industrial entrepreneurs. Fast forward 80 years, and they police are raiding the home of the bank’s general manager. They found $4.5 million stashed in shoeboxes. And today, Turkey’s state-run bank dealings are ensnaring U.S. President Donald Trump and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, the U.S. Justice Department, and Iran… Halkbank has been accused of corruption and mismanagement quite few times in the last three decades; but it’s more or less managed to survive the allegations. Under investigation since the early 1990s, Halkbank management has consistently succeeded in dodging accusations thanks to high-level government connections. In 2013, a massive corruption investigation launched by Turkish law enforcement officials at the behest of U.S.-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, Erdogan’s ally-turned-enemy, was summarily suppressed by the government. Erdogan saw to it […]