Kardemir

Steel
BIST: KRDMA
Turkey

"Giant Turkish steel manufacturer Kardemir, a publicly traded company, appears to have received questionable wire transfers from a third country via JP Morgan financial services that should have raised red flags but somehow fell through the cracks. Kardemir made a deal in 2013 with Iranian energy firm Tavana to sell steel products, but the funds were not transferred from Iran; rather they were rerouted from Iraq, a third country, in the amount of $10 million. It was part of what was promised to be a €150 million business deal that would benefit Kardemir in the Iranian market against rivals from China, India and Russia. Although filtering mechanisms for questionable transfers that actually named the Iranian company on the transfer order failed to detect an anomaly, a branch manager at Halkbank triggered a heated discussion at the senior level when asked about the source of the money. Balkan, an avid fan of Khomeini, stepped in to reverse the Halkbank decision to stop the payment." (November 2017)

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"Turkish steel producer Kardemir has shipped 10,000 tons of rail to Iran as part of an €80-million contract to export 140,000 tons of rail, according to the company’s CEO Mesut Ugur Yilmaz. “The company has so far produced 40,000 tons of rail as per the contract,” he was quoted as saying by Turkish newspaper Hurriyet. Turkey signed the contract with Iran in April to barter Turkish rail in exchange for Iranian oil to be supplied to Turkish Petroleum Refineries Company. According to the Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Akhoundi, Iran needs to build 1,500 kilometers of railroads, for which it needs 1.8 million tons of rails by 2021." (Financial Tribune,  "Turkey Begins Rail Exports," 10/15/2016).