Cluster Pluck

- Bill Powell

It was supposed to be an ordinary family vacation, but it turned into something with grave global implications—and it wasn’t very relaxing.

In the spring of 2016, Reza Zarrab—a wealthy, 34-year-old gold trader—boarded a plane from Istanbul to Miami. He and his wife, the glamorous Turkish pop star Ebru Gündes, told friends they were taking their daughter to Disney World.

But Zarrab never made it to Cinderella’s Castle. When the Iran-born Turkish businessman deplaned in Florida, the FBI arrested him for running an elaborate scheme with one of America’s main adversaries. Over nearly six years, Zarrab had smuggled up to $1 billion of gold into Iran in exchange for cash, violating sanctions against Tehran, which the U.S. put in place in response to the country’s nuclear program. Zarrab had also arranged to sell Iranian oil and gas (another sanctions violation) using phony invoices to legitimize the deals under a legal U.N. program.

In late November, the gold trader went on trial in the Southern District of New York—as a witness for the prosecution. Days before, he had made a deal with the U.S. government: In return for a reduced sentence, he pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against another defendant in the sanctionsbusting scheme—the deputy CEO of a large, politically connected state-owned bank.