Flynn business partner, client charged as secret foreign agents for Turkey
A US court indicted two associates of President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser amid an investigation into Ankara's secret campaign to obtain the extradition of cleric Fetullah Gulen.
WASHINGTON — US prosecutors today announced the indictment of Bijan Rafiekian (also known as Bijan Kian), the Iranian-American former business partner of Michael Flynn, on two counts of secretly serving as an agent of a foreign government and conspiring to do so. Also charged was Kamil Ekim Alptekin, a Dutch-Turkish businessman, who is charged with the above two counts, as well as four counts of making false statements.
The six-count indictment was filed by prosecutors with the Eastern District of Virginia under seal on Dec. 12, and unsealed today.
It alleges that Kian and Alptekin — together with “Person A,” believed to be Flynn, who briefly served as President Donald Trump's national security adviser — conspired to have the government of Turkey secretly pay for Kian and Flynn’s company, the Flynn Intel Group, to lobby for the extradition of Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government blamed a failed July 2016 coup attempt on Gulen and his followers, and had long sought his extradition from the United States to Turkey.
However, rather than register with the Justice Department as lobbyists for Turkey, Kian and Alptekin, according to the indictment, conspired to have Alptekin’s company, Inovo BV, serve as the cutout. They tried to conceal from US authorities that some $530,000 in payments to the Flynn Intel Group were for work on behalf of the Turkish government, prosecutors allege. This deception occurred even as Flynn served as a top security adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign and subsequently became his first national security adviser. Kian, too, served as a member of the Trump transition, as part of the team preparing the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
