Rudy Giuliani and Michael Mukasey
A federal judge has ordered a hearing to address whether former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey have a conflict of interest in a case where they represent a Turkish gold trader charged with helping Iran violate sanctions imposed by Congress.
In letters to the court last week Benjamin Brafman of Brafman & Associates, a member of defendant Reza Zarrab’s legal team, said that Giuliani and Mukasey are serving “ancillary” roles in the case and will not appear before the court, assist in trial preparation or take part in plea negotiations with prosecutors.
Presiding in the case is Southern District Judge Richard Berman.
In February, Giuliani and Mukasey both traveled to Turkey to discuss Zarrab’s case with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They informed then-Southern District U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the trip prior to their departure.
“This isn’t an attempt to backdoor the Southern District,” Brafman said on Monday at a conference before Berman. “I’ve made that clear to them.”
Giuliani, who served in the 1980s as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is senior adviser to Greenberg Traurig and Mukasey is of counsel to Debevoise & Plimpton.
Greenberg Traurig and Debevoise both represent banks that say they were defrauded by Reza Zarrab, who is also being charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The victim-banks, which prosecutors say were tricked into processing prohibited transactions by Iranian entities, are Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citibank, HSBC, Standard Chartered, UBS and Wells Fargo.
Greenberg Traurig is also a registered agent for the Turkish government, according to court papers.
At the Monday conference, Berman ordered a Curcio hearing in the case to discuss and address potential conflicts of interest, which he said would be held later this month.
Zarrab was brought into the courtroom for the conference. Dressed in a dark blue jail uniform, he listened to the proceedings with the help of a Turkish language translator.
Zarrab was arrested in Florida in March 2016 and, in October 2016, Berman denied his motion to dismiss.
The Southern District U.S. Attorney’s Office, now under the leadership of Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim, had moved the Curcio hearing, arguing that Giuliani and Mukasey are playing a “key”—rather than “ancillary”—role in United States v. Zarrab, 15-cr-867, and that Zarrab’s Sixth Amendment right to conflict-free counsel may be affected by their representation.
Assistant U.S. attorney Michael Lockard said at the conference that “it is clear” that Giuliani and Mukasey have been brought into the case to affect its disposition and that a Curcio hearing is needed to protect the “finality of judgment in the case.”
