An FBI agent investigating a massive Turkish-Iranian sanctions-busting scheme confirmed that the Turkish government had pressured Washington for the release of key defendants in the illicit trade and that legal proceedings against co-conspirators were far from over. The remarks, the first of their kind by an American official at a public event, spell further trouble for Turkey’s creaky finances and fraught ties with the United States.

FBI special agent Jennifer McReynolds told a Washington audience on Aug. 28, “High-level foreign officials like Turkey’s ministers of justice and foreign affairs and Turkey’s President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan exerted diplomatic pressure. They lobbied the Department of Justice, the State Department and even the White House to release [Reza] Zarrab and [Mehmet Hakan Atilla] without a trial.”

McReynolds then confirmed Ankara’s darkest fear: “The implications of this investigation are far from over. Many other co-conspirators are indicted who have not yet been brought to justice.”

Just who might they be, and how far up in the echelons of Turkish power? McReynolds declined to comment on this, but in brief remarks to Al-Monitor said that further prosecution of officials involved in the scheme “could” follow. She did not elaborate.