- Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci has said he has “no guilty conscience” over attending a ceremony where controversial Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab, embroiled in Turkey’s huge corruption probe that went public in December 2013, was awarded for his company’s high export performance.
Still, Zeybekci also noted that he wasn’t informed about the identity of the winner until the award was announced.
“I saw the president of the administrative board of the company just yesterday [June 21]. I don’t know him by sight either. It is not the state, but the sector, who drew up the list of nominees,” he told reporters on June 22.
In the general assembly meeting of the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM), which was attended by President Tayyip Erdoğan along with several cabinet ministers, Zarrab was given the “export champion” award for his company Volgam Gıda, which is involved in the jewelry sector.
Zeybekci presented Zarrab’s award along with Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş and TİM President Mehmet Büyükekşi.
“[Zarrab’s] company came first in its sector. We didn’t know until that moment. If we had known, I don’t know what would have happened. But it would be very exhausting if we started debating about who various politicians in Turkey should or should not stand next to” Zeybekci added.
“But as the economy minister, I have no guilty conscience over a person whom I saw for the first time” he added.
Zarrab was the prime suspect in a corruption and bribery scandal embroiling the government that went public on Dec. 17, 2013. He was accused of being the ringleader of a money laundering and gold smuggling ring in Turkey that circumnavigated sanctions against Iran.
Volgam Gıda became Turkey’s 13th largest exporter in 2014 with exports worth around $847 million in the TİM list of 1,000 top exporters. Almost all of Volgam Gıda’s exports were comprised of jewelry exports in 2014, when Turkey’s jewelry exports saw record rises, up to $3 billion with a 5,137 percent of increase from the previous year.
The company did not even feature in the 2013 top 1,000 list. The company was followed by Arpas in 2014 with around $145 million of exports and the Istanbul Gold Refinery with $109 million in exports, according to TİM data.
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