On 17 June 2026, a federal judge in Manhattan threw out the United States criminal case against Halkbank, closing almost seven years of prosecution that had hung over one of Türkiye's biggest state lenders. There was no trial. The case ended in a deal.
TurkishPress has tracked Halkbank far longer than the indictment. The archive follows it from the wreckage of the 2001 financial crisis, through privatization and a record stock-market debut, into the long fight in the US courts. Here is that arc, set against the ruling that closed it.
From the 2001 crisis to the Pamukbank merger
Halkbank's modern shape came out of the 2001 cleanup. In June 2002 the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency put the troubled Pamukbank under the state Savings and Deposit Insurance Fund, citing a capital hole of about $2 billion, with commitments that ran past total assets. SDIF and Halkbank's managers agreed in principle to merge the two in March 2004, and Parliament passed the transfer law that July.
The merger closed on 17 November 2004. Halkbank's general manager, Hasan Cebeci, said every Pamukbank branch would carry the Halkbank name from that day, and that staff would climb to about 11,100 from 7,400. Officials said the deal made Halkbank the third largest bank in Türkiye by deposits. It kept its focus on small and medium businesses, the niche it had worked since its founding.
The Özkan and Önal case at home
The Pamukbank collapse also set off a political reckoning. In December 2003 Parliament voted to investigate former Deputy Prime Minister Hüsamettin Özkan and former State Minister Recep Önal, arguing they had let Halkbank take losses by failing to act in time. In June 2004 the General Assembly sent both men to the High Tribunal.
It did not go smoothly. In July 2004 the Constitutional Court bounced the referral back to Parliament: the single combined vote broke procedure, since Özkan and Önal should have been voted on separately. By year's end the files were complete, and the Tribunal was set to start in February 2005, with the two former ministers facing up to three years. Worth remembering, the scrutiny of Halkbank's books started in Ankara, years before any US courtroom.
Privatization and the 2007 public offering
By 2007 the story had turned from rescue to sale. The Privatization Administration floated close to 25 percent of Halkbank to the public. Finance Minister Kemal Unakıtan called it the largest offering on the İstanbul Stock Exchange to that point, and the biggest bank privatization in Europe since 2004.
Demand was heavy. Unakıtan said foreign investors bid 8.7 times the shares on offer, total demand hit about $12.9 billion, and 230 foreign investors from 20 countries took part. Shares priced at 8 new Turkish lira each, roughly $6 at the time, valuing the whole bank at about $7.38 billion. That year Fitch affirmed Halkbank's long-term rating at "BB-", and the Bank of New York handed it an award for payment transactions. By 2008 the bank reported net profit of ₺1.018 billion (about $580 million) on assets of ₺51.1 billion, with chief executive Hüseyin Aydın playing down fears about the global downturn.
The US indictment, 2019 to 2021
The calm didn't last. In October 2019 a US grand jury indicted Halkbank, alleging it had helped Iran dodge American sanctions. Prosecutors said the bank moved Iranian oil revenue through front companies and false documents, helping shift some $20 billion, about $1 billion of it laundered through the US financial system. Halkbank pleaded not guilty to bank fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy.
The early fight was procedural. US District Judge Richard Berman set a contempt hearing in December 2019 after the bank declined to enter the case formally, trying a "special and limited appearance" to argue the charges should be tossed. An appeals court granted a brief stay in early 2020, and the bank was arraigned that February. Through 2020 and 2021 its central argument was sovereign immunity: as a majority state-owned lender, its lawyer told the Second Circuit, it was shielded by the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. Prosecutors answered that the law covers only civil cases. The bank said it complied fully with national and international rules, and called the case part of a political campaign against Türkiye.
Through the Supreme Court and back, 2023 to 2025
The immunity question climbed to the top. In April 2023 the US Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower courts: the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act did not bar a criminal prosecution, it ruled, while leaving open whether common-law immunity might apply. Halkbank said it kept its right to appeal further.
On remand, a Second Circuit panel ruled in October 2024 that common-law immunity did not shield a state company's commercial activity from prosecution. The Supreme Court declined to take that up in October 2025, clearing the way for the case to proceed. A separate civil suit had already been dismissed in January 2024, and an appeal hearing in the criminal matter was held in New York that February.
The final ruling, 17 June 2026
There was never a trial. In March 2026 Halkbank reached a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. On 17 June 2026 Judge Berman, who had run the case since 2019, granted the Justice Department's motion to dismiss, finding the bank had met the agreement's conditions.
By Halkbank's own statement, carried by Anadolu Ajansı, the bank admitted no criminal guilt, will pay no judicial or administrative fine, and saw the US Office of Foreign Assets Control close its administrative process without further action. Those are the bank's terms for the deal. A deferred prosecution agreement normally sets conditions a company has to satisfy, and prosecutors in Manhattan tied the resolution to broader diplomatic efforts. For two NATO allies whose relations the case had strained for years, the dismissal removed a long-standing irritant.
Set that against what the archive records before it: a bank rebuilt after a banking crisis, sold to global investors at a multibillion-dollar valuation, then accused in the largest sanctions-evasion case of its kind. Almost seven years in the US courts, and Halkbank left without a conviction or, by its own account, a penalty.