The ruling in bankruptcy court caps a long legal battle over the fate of a company accused of fueling the opioid epidemic and the family that owns it.

By Jan Hoffman Sept. 1, 2021, 4:42 p.m. ET

Purdue Pharma, the maker of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin, was dissolved on Wednesday in a wide-ranging bankruptcy settlement that will also require the company’s owners, members of the Sackler family, to turn over billions of their fortune to address the deadly opioid epidemic.

But the agreement includes a much-disputed condition: It largely absolves the Sacklers of Purdue opioid-related liability. And as such, they will remain among the richest families in the country.

Judge Robert Drain of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., provisionally approved the plan, saying he wanted modest adjustments. The painstakingly negotiated plan will end thousands of lawsuits brought by state and local governments, tribes, hospitals and individuals to address a public health crisis that led to the deaths of more than 500,000 people nationwide.

The settlement terms have been harshly criticized for shielding the Sacklers. They are receiving protections that are typically given to companies that emerge from bankruptcy, but not necessarily to owners who, like the Sacklers, do not themselves file for bankruptcy.

Several states were preparing to file an appeal as soon as the judge approved the settlement.

In exchange for the protections, the Sacklers agreed to turn over $4.5 billion, including federal settlement fees, paid in installments over roughly nine years. Those payments, and the profits of a new public benefit drug company rising from Purdue’s ashes with no ties to the Sackler family, will mainly go to addiction treatment and prevention programs across the country.

Judge Drain delivered his ruling orally from the bench in a marathon session that ran to six hours, meticulously working through his reasoning in a case he called the most complex he had ever faced. “This is a bitter result,” he said. “B-I-T-T-E-R,” he spelled out, explaining that he was incredibly frustrated that so much of the Sackler money was parked in offshore accounts. He said he had expected and wished for a higher settlement.

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YEREVAN, September 1. /ARKA/. Konstantin Zatulin, First Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on CIS, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, addressed today a welcoming letter to the participants of the ProArtsakh Forum, dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

Zatulin says in his letter that he believes that last year’s war in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone should not have happened and that the Russian and Armenian peoples have lost a lot as a result of that bloody conflict.

‘In Stepanakert and Yerevan, as well as in the whole world, the people should know that Russia will not allow the Armenian people to be humiliated with impunity on their historical land. The guarantee of that is the presence of Russian peacekeepers in Artsakh,” Zatulin said.

Zatulin expressed regret that this time he will not be able to personally participate in the Forum, since the election campaign in the Sochi District is entering the most crucial final stage (Zatulin runs for parliament from the Sochi district in the southern Russia that has a very strong Armenian community).

“But mentally we are together. I hope that after the elections I will make my first foreign trips to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh,” he said.

September 2 marks the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic of Artsakh.

On September 27, 2020, Azerbaijani armed forces, backed by Turkey and foreign mercenaries and terrorists, attacked Nagorno-Karabakh along the entire front line using rocket and artillery weapons, heavy armored vehicles, military aircraft and prohibited types of weapons such as cluster bombs and  phosphorus weapons.

 After 44 days of the war, on November 9, the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a statement on the cessation of all hostilities. According to the document, the town of Shushi, the districts of Agdam, Kelbajar and Lachin were handed over to Azerbaijan, with the exception of a 5-kilometer corridor connecting Karabakh with Armenia. 

A Russian peacekeeping contingent was deployed along the contact line in Karabakh and along the Lachin corridor.

Jamaal Bowman has formed close ties to controversial Turkish group

Chuck Ross,

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) attended a fundraiser hosted last month by a Turkish-American advocacy group with close ties to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose members were on hand in 2017 when the Turkish leader’s bodyguards beat peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C.

Two officials with the Turkish American National Steering Committee, a nonprofit cofounded by a relative of Erdogan’s, hosted the “meet and greet” fundraiser for Bowman at a restaurant in New Jersey on Aug. 7. Bowman, an acolyte of the “Squad,” appeared at two of the committee’s events in May, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The committee has been accused of working as an influence group for the Erdogan regime. Founded in 2016, the Steering Committee has hosted Erdogan at multiple events in the United States and frequently holds protests supporting Erdogan-backed causes. It lobbied aggressively against the U.S. government’s recognition of the Ottoman Empire’s genocide of Armenians. Officials with the Steering Committee, including Erdogan relative Halil Mutlu, accompanied Erdogan’s delegation in May 2017 when his bodyguards attacked peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington.

“[The Steering Committee] operates as an Erdogan front, one of many astroturf groups advancing this dictator’s anti-American agenda in Washington, D.C.,” Aram Suren Hamparian, the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told the Free Beacon in June.

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has been targeted by the Erdogan regime, said Bowman was “siding with the most dictatorial elements in Turkey” by appearing at Steering Committee events.

Rubin said Bowman was “symbolically spitting on Turkish journalists and progressives imprisoned by the Erdogan regime, and giving solace to a group on the wrong side of the attack on Americans in the heart of Washington, D.C.”

Bowman’s blind eye to Erdogan’s crackdown in Turkey is a stark contrast to his support for left-wing causes at home. Bowman supports the movement to defund police departments and has said he wants to “disarm the police.”

Bowman posed for photographs with Mutlu at the recent fundraiser and at a previous event held by the committee. Mutlu and other officials with the committee contributed more than $6,750 to Bowman’s congressional campaign last year. The group supported Bowman’s primary challenge against former representative Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), who was a staunch critic of the Erdogan regime.

Relations between the United States and Turkey have deteriorated in recent years as Erdogan has purged Turkish media companies, schools, and the military of his critics. Turkey has become one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists.

The Steering Committee’s close ties to the Turkish government were on display days before the group hosted the Bowman fundraiser. Mutlu, who is Erdogan’s cousin, met in Ankara on July 26 with Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and his deputy.

According to a post on the Steering Committee’s Facebook page, Mutlu told the Turkish officials that the group would “reach out to the U.S. political leaders, media, and public” regarding U.S.-Turkey relations. The Steering Committee also boasted that it has representatives throughout the United States “who communicate and educate the local leaders on issues related to Turkey and the Turkish community.”

Bowman’s office and the Turkish American National Steering Committee did not respond to requests for comment.

Source: https://freebeacon.com/democrats/squad-member-was-guest-of-honor-at-fundraiser-hosted-by-pro-erdogan-group/

Both Ziraat and Halkbank are run by Turkey’s sovereign wealth fund, which is chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

German authorities could better serve both consumers and the integrity of the global financial system by disclosing which Turkish financial institution received severe punishments from the German financial watchdog, BaFin, Aykan Erdemir, Turkey director at Foundations for Defence of Democracies, said on Tuesday.

Last weekend, several Turkish media outlets reported that BaFin had restricted the activities of Frankfurt-based Ziraat Bank International AG, a branch of Turkey’s largest state-run lender Ziraat Bank, following discrepancies in high-profile loans and in the collection of deposits.

The banking authority announced a series of severe penalties, considered the last step before shutting down the bank completely, against the unnamed lender. It will be subject to the following sanctions:

-A ban on large-scale loans, where the bank will no longer be able to offer loans of millions of Euros in return for collateral in Turkey.

-A ban on accepting large-scale deposits and offering interest rates above market value.

-A warning against the administration, and a rejection of directors chosen by Turkey.

-An order for the bank to use its own capital in all banking operations and an increase in guarantees for administrative operations.

“BaFin states that it may choose to announce measures against financial institutions anonymously “if the publication would cause disproportionately great damage to the institution, for example in the form of damage to its reputation or loss of trust by other market participants”,” Erdemir said

Erdemir recalled that in October 2019, U.S. prosecutors charged Halkbank, Turkey’s second-largest public lender, with participating “in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran” which led to the conviction of Halkbank’s deputy general manager on related charges.

“During his 2017 trial, the main witness also implicated Ziraat Bank, which shuttered its New York branch less than two weeks later. More recently, Ziraat came under further scrutiny for deals, sovereign questionable offshore conflicts of interest, and irregular transactions with Turkey’s wealth,” Erdemir said.

Both Ziraat and Halkbank are run by Turkey’s sovereign wealth fund, which is chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Erdemir said German officials should publicly reveal the name of the financial institution that is now subject to the sanctions.

“German authorities could better serve both consumers and the integrity of the global financial system by disclosing which financial institution merited such severe punishments,” he said. “Journalists may have identified the culprit, but denials will persist until BaFin removes 

the unwarranted veil of anonymity.”

“After the disastrous war, numerous losses, amid the many challenges ahead of our two statehoods, September 2 has a special meaning, which is our unity – our unity with Artsakh,” the Head of “I Have Honour” opposition faction Artur Vanetsyan stated on Wednesday at the special sitting of the Artsakh Republic National Assembly dedicated to the country’s Independence Day. 

Addressing the parliamentarians, Vanetsyan stressed that Artsakh is one the key pillars bridging the Armenia-Artsakh-Diaspora trinity. Furthermore, the future of our people, as a decent nation embodying a statehood, has been and will be determined in Artsakh.  

“We are with Artsakh, we will spare no effort within our abilities to voice issues of the Artsakh security on all domestic and international platforms,  which should be eventually crowned with the settlement of the Artsakh issue  for the benefit of the Armenian nation, international recognition of the right of Artsakh people to self-determination, deoccupation of the Artsakh territories and other processes stemming from that,” said Vanetsyan. 

The only solution to that, per Vanetsyan, is though consolidation to overcome the crisis situation and open door to a secure future cherished for centuries by the Armenian people. 

“I assure we will always stand by Artsakh people, support them with whatever we can, promote the settlement of the Artsakh issue, international recognition of the Artsakh’s self-determination and independent status. There can be no alternative to that as the recent war showed how the fates of Armenia and Artsakh  are inseparably connected in all directions,” stated Vanetsyan. 

As at home in his brogues on a red carpet in New York’s Upper East Side as in steel caps on an oil rig in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Emirati businessman Badr Jafar loves nothing more than singing the praises of his philanthropic endeavours and promoting the Middle-East youth. But behind the camera lights he has built a vast empire in the much more traditional – and profitable – sectors of oil and port terminals.At 42 years of age Badr Jafar, a native of the Emirate of Sharjah, a Cambridge alumnus of 1999, and a 2011 World Economic Forum “Young Global Leader”, a title backed by the UN where he frequently intervenes, is already a familiar face among the global elite. He sits at the head of Crescent Petroleum and Gulftainer, two groups active in the oil and gas sector and container terminals. Enjoying the support of the Emir of Sharjah, Mohamed Al Qasimi, and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, his half-brother and right-hand-man to UAE leader Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Jafar is skilled at knowing the right people in the right places.

The empire he now helps grow was built by his father, Hamid Jafar, a member of a prominent Shiite Baghdad family that long prospered under Saddam Hussein‘s regime. Jafar, father, launched the family success story in the 1970s, first with Crescent Petroleum then Gulftainer. Under these close ties with the Iraqi authorities – forged by the family patriarch, then nourished by Dhia Jafar and his brother Jafar Dhia Jafar, father of Iraq’s nuclear programme -, business boomed. Working with his brother Majid Jafar and sister Razan Jafar, Badr Jafar has kept the ball rolling.

But the young entrepreneur’s sights were set well beyond the family business. With the support of a trusted set of business allies such as Peter Richards and Ravi Kumar, Badr Jafar has found his own place within the global landscape, aspiring to “diplomatic entrepreneurship” through the construction of a new business environment in the Gulf. The Pearl Initiative foundation, created in 2010 and of which the vice chairman of Bahrain’s Shura Council Jamal Fakhro is a managing partner, answers to this call to develop the private sector by bringing together prominent figures of the business and political spheres, and state and international institutions. Jafar is also close to the political world of his home emirate, Sharjah, and enjoys the support of Emir Sultan Muhammad Al Qasimi as well as chairman of the chamber of commerce Adbullah Sultan Al Owais.

Outside his homeland, Jafar advocates for various institutions. He chairs Endeavor UAE in New York, and is a board member of Gaza Sky Geeks, a project aimed at promoting a digital economy in Palestine. His largesse has extended to numerous philanthropic activities: in 2020 he founded the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy based at Cambridge Judge Business School, where he is a member of the advisory board. Jafar’s contacts are many and varied. He is known to have formed friendships with Bill Gates and the now disgraced Hollywood star Kevin Spacey, and has investing in various film and theatre productions. In 2015, he co-financed the Palestinian drama film The Idol and founded the Middle-East Theatre Academy. There have even been whispers of relationships with Hollywood celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell in 2006 and Czech model Petra Nemcova in 2008.

Redacción Argentina,

Consulate of the Western Armenian Republic in the Argentine Republic

The Republic of Western Armenia emerged when the millenary Armenian people decided to execute their legal right internationally granted in 1920, which allows them to have a sovereign State over their ancestral territory of more than 5000 years.

The biblical, historical and native Armenian people inhabited their Motherland long before Noah’s Ark ran aground on the top of Mount Ararat.

Over the millennia, our people have shaped their own destiny in their original territory and lived very different moments in time, from being the main characters of the most extensive reign the world has ever known in the Mesopotamia (years of the memorable king Tigran or Dikran “The Great”) to the blue moment in which they were forced to be dominated by the ignominious Ottoman Empire, a sultanate of Turks that came from the steppes of Central Asia.

This barbarism within civilization resulted in the first genocide perpetrated in the 20th century, which was recently remembered and recognised by the current President of the United States of America Joe Biden.

In spite of the fact that there is overwhelming historical evidence perfectly well documented, as well as survivors’ testimonies, this abominable crime is still unpunished and the political heirs of genocide perpetrators stick to their guns, shamelessly denying the past while usurping the lands of the people they killed throughout a proven genocide.

Nonetheless, the brave Armenian Nation did not give up when facing that extremely lethal cowardice and continued fighting for its people rights. This is how in the context of the First World War the dreadful genocide survivors created the Armenian Legion within the Eastern Legion in the Foreign Legion, under the command of the British General Edmund Allenby, defeated Turks, recovered Cilicia and helped in the recovery of Syria and Palestine for the Allies.

Russia was the first country that legally recognised native Western Armenian people and their right to claim independence based on the people’s right to self-determination. After having signed a ceasefire agreement with Turkey on December 18, 1917, in Erzincan, the Russian Army did not leave the Western Armenian territory (well known then as ʽTurkish Armeniaʼ) until Russia recognised the right of native Armenians living in those lands to self-determination by issuing a decree on December 29, 1917, until they achieve their total independence.

Finally, the expected and long-awaited global recognition in international law took place. A state called ʽArmeniaʼ was recognised in 1920, on the basis of the six Armenian villages of the historical Western Armenia and Erzerum (Karin) as its capital city. De facto and de jure recognition was accorded to this State and its Government on January 19 and May 11, 1920, respectively. In this way, Armenia became Subject of Law with Diplomatic Recognition in public international law.

On August 10, 1920, the new State of Armenia was invited to sign the Treaty of Sėvres, also accomplishing Turkey’s recognition of Armenia as a sovereign state.

Both states, Armenia and Turkey, submitted themselves to international arbitration headed by the President of the United States of America in order to define the western borders of Armenia. In other words, both States requested that an international arbitration award be entered for the purpose of having their borders established. This international and legal act finished with the arbitral award that Woodrow Wilson made known on November 22, 1920, by which borders between Armenia and Turkey were finally established, a fact that is currently and indisputably in legal force.

Nevertheless, by the time the international award was made known, historic facts crashed with unusual promptness against Armenian interests, and the State of Armenia could not be properly established. In parallel, an insurrection movement overthrew the Sultan in Turkey and the new leaders took over the territory of the Armenian State with violence, being this fact an illegal act of usurpation in detriment of international law. Almost at the same time, the creation and expansion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) caused the sovietisation of the eastern territory of the new State of Armenia, whose borders could not be delineated neither with Azerbaijan nor with Georgia, as requested in the Treaty of Sėvres (Art. 92).

These simultaneous facts, the usurpation of the western territory of Armenia and the sovietisation of the eastern territory, refrained Armenia from formalizing its government and take possession of the recognised state.

This is how the Armenian State, which up to now enjoys full and valid international recognition by a score of countries, was forced to plunge into an involuntary absence of 90-year historical representation. Among those countries that recognised the State of Armenia, we can mention Great Britain (England, Ireland and Scotland), France, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zeeland, Union of South Africa, India, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, United States of America, Japan, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Turkey, Brazil and Argentina.

When the USSR started to disintegrate, the authorities of the former Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, for unknown reasons that history will judge in due course, did not declare themselves as legal successors of the State of Armenia recognised in 1920. On the contrary, they decided to claim their Soviet territory (a part of the ancient Eastern Armenia) and requested the world to be granted sovereignty by recognizing a new State of Armenia.

The request was granted, and quickly, all countries send over their ambassadors to Erevan, the capital city of the new State.

That day, the millenary Armenian people that constitute one of the most ancient nations in the world, were divided into two states: (1) this new Armenian State recognised in 1991, and (2) the State of Armenia recognised in 1920, with clearly established borders in the West and borders pending to be delineated in the East for international law.

Moreover, the new State of Armenia was called ʽRepublic of Armeniaʼ, using the same name of the State that suffered a lack of representation since 1920, albeit with full and current international recognition.

When we native people of the Armenian State (1920), spread out around the world walking through the exile forcefully imposed by Turkey by perpetrating the genocide, had the opportunity to foresee this fact, exercising the right of the native people enshrined in the international law, we simply started to take charge of restoring our State, renamed REPUBLIC OF WESTERN ARMENIA.

The small villages that compose the ancient Western Armenia ‒Artsaj, Najichevan and Djavak‒ are part of the inseparable Republic of Western Armenia, and since 2004, the millenary Armenian people have been slowly but firmly executing the legal rights that are already internationally recognised.

The Declaration of right to self-determination of Armenians who form the native people of the State of Armenia recognised in 1920 (well known today as the ʽRepublic of Western Armeniaʼ) was signed in the city of Shushi (Artsaj), in 2004. The Constitution, the flag and the emblem of that State were created in 2011, and the National Anthem was also adopted. In 2013, the members of the National Assembly (Parliament) of the Republic of Western Armenia were elected by democratic elections through electronic vote via internet. In 2004, the President Arménag Aprahamian was elected. He issued the Executive Order No. 12 in the same year, in which it is stated that the Republic of Western Armenia is the successor of the State recognised in 1920 in fact and in law. On June 24, 2016, the President ratified the Treaty of Sèvres through a new executive order, in line with the powers conferred in the Constitution.

In the midst of the recent warlike attack mounted by Azerbaijan and Turkey against Artsaj and part of the current Republic of Armenia, we the members of the Republic of Western Armenia are ready in 2021 to face Turkey and Azerbaijan in the diplomatic field, and demand the return of our ancestral lands on which we have current international legal rights. We are doing this by raising awareness among our people about these facts that are usually unknown, conducting a massive citizenship process, and taking all necessary measures to continue our millenary path around the world, contributing our cultural originality for the enjoyment of humanity.

Local designers have been growing their market slowly for years, but the fallout from last year’s war with Azerbaijan has kickstarted the industry.

Last December, a prominent spot on Yerevan’s central Abovyan Street was home to an outpost of the Turkish fast-fashion chain Mavi. 

But following a ban on Turkish imports into Armenia, a reaction to Turkey’s extensive support for Azerbaijan in last year’s war, Mavi is gone, replaced by a homegrown substitute: Prime, a new Armenian label selling hipster reinventions of everyday basics. The store is packed with sweatshirts, jeans and T-shirts of all shapes and sizes. A selection of accessories – handmade by one of the salespeople – hangs on the wall. 

Before the ban, clothing comprised the single largest category of Turkish imports to Armenia. Local production of textiles had been slowly growing for years, but has been kickstarted by the embargo.

“The ban helped a lot,” said Elen Manukyan, the co-founder of the Fashion and Design Chamber, a non-profit aimed at supporting and promoting Armenian designers. As Turkish clothing has disappeared from the Armenian market, local producers started offering a broader variety of products instead of the usual assortment of underwear and socks. “In addition, the war changed people’s attitude towards Armenian-made products. Consumers started prioritizing Armenian things,” Manukyan told Eurasianet.

The Fashion and Design Chamber supports local designers by helping them access investment, training, and international fashion shows. The government has helped, too, providing tax cuts to major textile investors.

Over 100 large and small companies are engaged in the sector. Still, the activity is a far cry from Soviet days, when Armenia exported clothing throughout the USSR and textiles employed 150,000 people, a quarter of the workforce, compared to around 8,000 today. 

The Armenian government first developed a strategy to promote development of the industry in 2013. The plan drew attention to unused potential manufacturing capacity and projected double-digit growth. Production has indeed grown significantly, with output value tripling between 2015 and 2019 (data for 2020 is not yet available). 

But many challenges remain. Armenia used to source most of the fabrics from Turkey. And while the embargo does not apply to raw materials such as cotton, experts predict that the Armenian textile industry’s sourcing map will have to change. Another serious challenge, = Manukyan says, are undeveloped business skills and poor schools.

“Universities do not have the necessary technical equipment and curricula are outdated,” she said. “But little by little we have educated the domestic consumer; they have started buying Armenian. Designers also have changed their attitude and now work on mass production to offer affordable clothing.” 

That change is easy to see on Yerevan’s streets: Whereas Armenian-made clothing used to be restricted to a few haute couture offerings, more recently mid-size brands offering cheaper but unique clothing have come on the market. 

Some of these labels emphasize Armenian culture – shirts adorned with letters of the Armenian alphabet, Christian symbols, ornaments from classical Armenian art – to attract customers from the large global diaspora. 

Other new designers try to appeal to local youth by reinterpreting symbols from popular culture. One, Light Affect, has built an identity around the image of “qyarts” – members of a subculture of powerful, semi-criminal street thugs from the 1990s and early 2000s, which have been transformed from objects of fear to that of ironic mockery.

Another brand with a similar aesthetic, Prime, features stylized illustrations of Armenia’s landscapes. Some of Prime’s T-shirts feature famous mountains and hiking boots. The company also has a line of shirts with Soviet cars – retro models much older than the brand’s target audience.

Designer brands with higher price tags have a harder time getting a foothold in the Armenian market, where most consumers have little to spend. Vahan Khachatryan, an Italian-trained co-founder of the Fashion and Design Chamber, sells haute couture clothing worn by celebrities. Others – like LOOM Weaving, which focuses on knitted items or ZGEST, known for its dresses – offer mid-range prices, yet the cost of a single item can be comparable with Armenia’s monthly minimum wage.  

Some small designers work together, setting up stores under the slogan “Made in Armenia.” One such shop, 5concept on Yerevan’s central Sayat Nova Avenue, offers clothing by dozens of Armenian labels, most of which are too small to afford their own boutiques. 

Manukyan of the Fashion and Design Chamber is optimistic that Armenian-made clothes will soon be a significant force in the local market.

“Six or seven years ago there were only individuals who worked with custom orders. And factories would just take orders from Russia, sew and ship,” she said. “Now we have serious brands, and new names emerge every day. The [design] field is very active, and it goes hand in hand with textiles because the number of factories is growing, too.”

Source: https://eurasianet.org/ban-on-turkish-imports-boosts-armenian-fashion

Irregularities Point to Erdoğan’s Manipulation of Financial System to Consolidate Power

Aykan Erdemir Turkey Program Senior Director

Umut Can Fidan

Executive Summary

Concerns continue to mount about the integrity of the Turkish financial system. News reports surfaced in January alleging that one of Turkey’s largest financial institutions was involved in questionable offshore deals, conflicts of interest, and irregular transactions with the country’s wealth fund. Turkey’s largest lender, Ziraat Bank, and largest mobile phone operator, Turkcell, are at the center of the scandal. Multiple news outlets report that Ziraat extended a $1.6 billion nonperforming loan to an offshore company, likely under the direction of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish strongman appears to have used public funds, courts, and questionable financial transactions to further consolidate economic and political power. The Turkish president already has an established record of targeting businesses and media outlets once owned by secular figures and political rivals. U.S. regulators and prosecutors should continue to address concerns regarding illicit finance in the Turkish banking system.

Introduction

Turkey’s state-owned Ziraat Bank, the country’s largest lender by total assets, came under public scrutiny in January for a $1.6 billion nonperforming loan it had extended in 2014 to an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Although Ziraat has since issued a press statement claiming to have settled the loan as of October 2020, Turkey’s opposition parties and independent media outlets continue to highlight multiple irregularities in one of the biggest loans in Turkish banking history.¹ Since the initial exposé by a Turkish daily on January 4, the Ziraat Bank scandal has widened: Through a chain of questionable deals involving multiple conflicts of interest, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, used Ziraat Bank, which the fund fully owns, to disappear a nonperforming loan issued to an offshore entity to purchase control of Turkey’s largest mobile phone operator, Turkcell.²

Turkcell has the potential to be a strategic asset for Erdoğan at home and abroad. The company already underwrites several pro-Erdoğan institutions in Turkey and the United States. The Turkish president could further attempt to use the telecommunications company to facilitate his control over information as a tool to suppress domestic dissent. There are concerns that this might already be happening. This past January, Erdoğan raised privacy concerns about Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service to urge Turkish users to switch to Turkcell’s messaging app, BiP, which can access more personal information than the other most popular messaging apps used in Turkey, according to a Turkish watchdog.³

The scandal involving Ziraat Bank, Turkey’s wealth fund, and Turkcell is the latest example of how Erdoğan seeks to wield public funds, courts, and irregular financial transactions to consolidate economic and political power. The Turkish strongman already has a troubling track record of taking control of businesses and media outlets once owned by secular figures and political rivals.

Turkish Papers Expose Ziraat Bank Scandal

The Turkish daily Sözcü dropped a bombshell on January 4. The paper reported that 2019 audits by the Turkish Court of Accounts revealed that the country’s two biggest public lenders, Ziraat Bank and Halkbank, provided large conglomerates with significant loans that have since become nonperforming.⁴ These loans were controversial because the primary mandate of state-owned Ziraat Bank is to extend credit to farmers, while the primary mandate of Halkbank is to extend credit to small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Three days later, another Turkish daily, BirGün, disclosed that one of the nonperforming loans was for $1.6 billion, with a 10-year maturity and a three-year grace period.⁵ Ziraat Bank offered the loan in 2014 to an unnamed company in tax haven BVI.⁶ The size of the loan, the audit noted, comprised a quarter of the total value of all the loans on the bank’s watch list. Over the last six years, BirGün reported, the offshore company repaid only $17.5 million.

On the same day as the BirGün exposé, Faik Öztrak, a lawmaker and deputy chairperson from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), held a press conference criticizing the Turkish government for extending Ziraat Bank loans to firms based in tax havens instead of providing them to farmers in need.⁷ In an attempt to defend its actions, Ziraat Bank issued a statement on January 8 stating it extended the 2014 loan to a BVI-based subsidiary of Çukurova Holding, a Turkish conglomerate, to help the company maintain its shares in Turkey’s largest mobile phone operator, Turkcell. However, Ziraat Bank did not name Çukurova Holding’s offshore subsidiary.⁸

The next day, Sözcü reported that the $1.6 billion loan went to Turkcell itself. This was incorrect. The loan went to a Turkcell shareholder.⁹ On January 11, amid growing public censure, Turkcell released an official disclosure through the Public Disclosure Platform of Turkey’s Central Securities Depository, denying the receipt of the Ziraat Bank loan.¹⁰ As a publicly traded company listed on both Borsa Istanbul and the New York Stock Exchange since 2000, Turkcell is subject to strict reporting and disclosure requirements.

Meanwhile, Deniz Yavuzyılmaz, another CHP lawmaker, highlighted another irregularity with the loan: multiple conflicts of interest.¹¹ The government-owned Turkey Wealth Fund (TWF), which fully owns Ziraat Bank and is Turkcell’s largest shareholder, with 26.2 percent of its shares, used the Ziraat loan to gain control of Turkcell’s board through Çukurova Holding.¹² Hüseyin Aydın, the Ziraat Bank CEO who approved the 2014 loan, sits on the boards of not only Turkcell but also TWF.¹³ Gerçek Gündem, a Turkish news portal, explained that these findings reveal “the lender and the borrower are in the same institution.”¹⁴

Ziraat and Illicit Finance

The concern surrounding Ziraat Bank’s massive offshore loan stems in part from the past misconduct of Turkey’s state-owned banks. Since 2013, various sanctions-busting, money laundering, and terrorism-finance allegations have surfaced against the banks.¹⁵ These allegations include October 2019 charges against Turkey’s Halkbank in a Manhattan federal court for “the bank’s participation in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran.”¹⁶ Policy experts have described the bank’s actions as the biggest sanctions-evasion scheme in recent history.¹⁷

There have also been numerous exposés of the Turkish ruling elite’s problematic offshore deals. In November 2017, CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu exposed a $15 million transfer by Erdoğan, his family members, and his allies to an account on the Isle of Man,¹⁸ one of the tax havens implicated in the 2017 Paradise Papers scandal.¹⁹ The papers consisted of 13.4 million leaked files that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its 95 media partners examined to expose financial crimes by political and economic elites across the globe.

The Black Sea, a Romania-based investigative reporting outlet, confirmed that the Erdoğan family owned three offshore companies, including a Maltese company that facilitated a 2008 deal that enabled Erdoğan to acquire a $25 million oil tanker from Azeri-Turkish billionaire Mübariz Mansimov. Mansimov has been in a Turkish prison since March 2020, charged with ties to a religious network Ankara blames for a 2016 failed coup attempt.²⁰

Likewise, The Black Sea reported that Erdoğan’s close associate former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım and Yıldırım’s family members owned $140 million in foreign assets in Malta and the Netherlands, among other jurisdictions.²¹ Before becoming minister of treasury and finance, Berat Albayrak, Erdoğan’s son-in-law, also helped establish offshore companies to help his then-employer, an Erdoğan business ally, evade taxes.²²

Erdoğan’s Bid to Control Çukurova Holding’s Assets

The chain of events that led to Ziraat Bank’s $1.6 billion loan to Çukurova Holding’s BVI-based subsidiary in 2014 offers a telling account of how Erdoğan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) consolidated economic and political power in Turkey by gradually taking over the country’s secular businesses, media outlets, and state institutions.

Çukurova Holding is a Turkish conglomerate with subsidiaries in industrial, construction, and information and communication technologies as well as media, transportation, trade, energy, and financial services.²³ In 2011, Forbes Turkey listed Çukurova Holding’s chairman, Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, a pro-secular and liberal figure, as Turkey’s richest man, with a net worth of $4 billion.²⁴

That year, however, The Wall Street Journal reported that Karamehmet was “fighting to survive” as he struggled with the financial and legal fallout from Turkey’s 2001 banking crisis as well as with the AKP’s growing pressure on pro-secular media bosses.²⁵ Karamehmet was not only battling “Swedish and Russian shareholders to keep his stake in Turkcell,” but also fighting “a nearly 12-year prison sentence for fraud” and the government’s freezing of “$1 billion of [Çukurova Holding’s] assets as collateral for alleged unpaid taxes.” In 2015, Forbes reported his net worth had declined to $1.15 billion, and dropped him from its billionaires list the following year.²⁶

Karamehmet’s troubles over Turkcell shares, his most valuable assets, date to a 2005 deal with Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman. That year, Fridman’s Moscow-based Alfa Group provided cash-strapped Çukurova Holding with a $3.3 billion financing package through BVI-based Cukurova Finance. $1.6 billion of it came in the form of six-year bonds convertible into 13.8 percent of Turkcell’s shares. Turkey’s state minister celebrated the deal as Russia’s “biggest foreign direct investment.”²⁷

According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings from June 2005, Çukurova Holding and Cukurova Finance, together with Fridman’s BVI-based Alfa Telecom Turkey Limited, made “an indirect investment in Turkcell via their respective holdings in Cukurova Telecom Holdings Limited,” another BVI-based company controlled by Karamehmet and Fridman.²⁸ This investment made Alfa Telecom Turkey Limited the indirect owner of 13.2 percent of Turkcell. Alfa Telecom Turkey Limited owned 49 percent of Cukurova Telecom, which in turn owned 52.9 percent of Turkcell Holding, the owner of 51 percent of Turkcell’s shares.

When Karamehmet later defaulted on his debt to Fridman, years of legal battles ensued, leading to a January 2013 UK Privy Council ruling in favor of Çukurova Holding and Cukurova Finance. This afforded Karamehmet the opportunity to reclaim a 13.8 percent stake in and control over Turkcell, but only if he could repay $1.6 billion to Fridman’s Alfa Group by July 30, 2014.²⁹

Two weeks before the deadline, Turkey’s Treasury and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency blocked a funding deal offered by an Istanbul-based private-equity firm owned by Yıldız Holding, one of the world’s largest food manufacturers. The firm was chaired by Murat Ülker, who had taken over Karamehmet and was Turkey’s richest man, with a $3.7 billion net worth.³⁰ The funding deal offered by Ülker’s Yıldız Holding would have enabled Karamehmet to maintain a majority stake in Turkcell and mitigate concerns about allowing a Russian company to acquire a majority stake in Turkey’s largest mobile operator. Furthermore, since the Ülker family is one of Turkey’s leading conservative Muslim families, with a history of doing business with Erdoğan before his rise to power, this solution should have been politically suitable.³¹ The Ülker family also enjoyed credibility within AKP circles for being targeted by secularists in the Turkish military following the “post-modern coup” of 1997, through which the Turkish military forced the country’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, to resign after only one year.³²

By 2014, however, Ülker was no longer favored by Erdogan. As a London-based financier told Al-Monitor in 2016, Ülker was “not viewed as being sufficiently subservient to Erdoğan” at a time when the Turkish president was “creating his own oligarchs.”³³ The cracks in the Ülker-Erdoğan relationship that complicated Yıldız Holding’s Turkcell deal with Çukurova Holding became public in November 2016, when Yıldız Holding became a target of Turkish government probes into the country’s July 2016 abortive coup d’état.³⁴ In 2020, the Turkish president even shuttered a university established by a foundation that Murat Ülker co-founded in 1986.³⁵

With only five days remaining before the July 30, 2014, payment deadline, and facing the prospect of Fridman’s imminent control over Turkcell, Ziraat Bank stepped in. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that the public lender’s $1.6 billion loan marked “a significant increase in the Turkish government’s involvement in the strategically important telecom industry.”³⁶ Thus, Erdoğan blocked a private financing deal and tapped into $1.6 billion in public funds via Ziraat Bank as a long-term strategy to control Turkcell.

In fact, Ziraat Bank’s bailout came four months after Turkey’s Capital Markets Board appointed three “independent” board members to Turkcell: two former AKP ministers and the chairman of the board of trustees of an Istanbul university with close ties to Erdoğan.³⁷ CHP lawmaker Deniz Yavuzyılmaz charged that Cukurova Finance was able to receive the Ziraat Bank loan only after Erdoğan allies joined Turkcell’s board.³⁸

Erdoğan’s bailout of Cukurova Finance through Ziraat Bank appears to be part of a strategy not only to control Turkcell, but also to transfer other businesses from the pro-secular tycoon Karamehmet to Erdoğan’s sphere of influence. In May 2013, Turkey’s Saving Deposit Insurance Fund seized Çukurova Holding’s media assets and its motor company BMC.³⁹ In November 2013, Erdoğan ally Ethem Sancak acquired 11 Çukurova media assets, including newspapers, a broadcaster, and a satellite TV provider.⁴⁰ Under Sancak’s management, these outlets voiced consistent support for the AKP. Sancak has also expressed devotion to Erdoğan, saying, “As I got to know Erdogan, I realized that such a kind of divine love between two men is possible.”⁴¹

In May 2014, 18 days before Ziraat Bank’s loan to Cukurova Finance, Sancak received the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund’s approval for his purchase of BMC, which since then has become an important pillar of Erdoğan’s economic and military partnership with Qatar, a key ideological ally.⁴² Erdoğan appears to have relieved Çukurova of all its strategic assets before targeting the most valuable asset, Turkcell, via a last-minute Ziraat Bank bailout.

Ziraat Bank’s U.S. Troubles

Ziraat Bank has become a key instrument not only of Erdoğan’s power consolidation at home, but also of his international ambitions. However, pushback from the U.S. Treasury Department and U.S. regulators and courts has forced Erdoğan to curb Ziraat Bank’s footprint abroad. He currently uses the lender predominantly to serve his domestic agenda.

In September 2014, the U.S. Federal Reserve launched a probe into Ziraat Bank’s New York branch on the heels of an earlier agreement under which the Federal Reserve required an audit of certain dollar clearing transactions Ziraat Bank processed in 2012 – at the height of Iran’s violations of U.S. sanctions.⁴³

In 2017, Ziraat Bank became one of the two Turkish public lenders implicated by Reza Zarrab, the Turkey-based ringleader of a massive Iranian sanctions-evasion scheme who later turned state’s witness as part of a federal case brought against Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the deputy CEO of Halkbank. Atilla was sentenced to 32 months in prison for “conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions against Iran.”⁴⁴ Zarrab testified in November 2017 that Turkey’s then-economy minister told him that Ziraat Bank was one of the Turkish banks Erdoğan authorized to move funds for Iran.⁴⁵ Ziraat denied this.⁴⁶ Less than two weeks after Zarrab’s testimony, Ziraat shuttered its New York branch, which had been active since 1983.⁴⁷

Ziraat again came to the attention of U.S. regulators in 2019. It was the key financial institution Erdoğan deployed to assist Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.⁴⁸ Bloomberg fingered Ziraat as the institution Venezuela’s central bank used “to pay contractors, move money and import products in Turkish liras.”⁴⁹ In July 2019, weeks after the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a Turkey-based company involved in a corruption and money laundering network directed by Maduro, Ziraat stopped working with Venezuela’s central bank, fearing U.S. sanctions.⁵⁰

Ziraat Bank and Turkey’s Sovereign Wealth Fund

The Turkcell saga has also exposed important connections between Ziraat Bank and TWF, Turkey’s sovereign wealth fund, which since its inception in August 2016 has been a source of controversy for providing Erdoğan with a “parallel budget” exempt from the oversight of Turkey’s parliament and Court of Accounts.⁵¹

On June 28, 2020, TWF disclosed its agreement to acquire 26.2 percent of Turkcell shares by entering into a series of agreements with four firms: Sweden’s former phone monopoly-turned-multinational telecommunications firm, Telia Company; Fridman’s LetterOne, which owns Alfa Telecom Turkey Limited; Karamehmet’s Çukurova Holding; and Ziraat Bank.⁵² Exhausted by what Bloomberg called a “15-year-old feud for control” over Turkcell that resulted in “spats over board representation, dividends, and other issues,” Telia Company sold its 24 percent indirect share in Turkcell for $530 million.⁵³

This dollar figure represented a 54 percent discount compared to Turkcell’s market value and amounted to a $322 million loss for Telia.⁵⁴ TWF, which fully owns Ziraat Bank, assumed Cukurova Finance’s $1.6 billion debt to the bank and received Karamehmet’s shares.⁵⁵ This deal also increased the share of Fridman’s LetterOne in Turkcell from 13.2 percent to 24.8 percent.

As Al-Monitor’s Mustafa Sönmez noted, despite selling some shares to LetterOne, TWF needed to pay “$1.6 billion to Ziraat Bank and $530 million to Telia,” a sum that would have forced the fund to issue debt securities, since that amount was not available in its coffers.⁵⁶ Five months later, what Sönmez refers to as “Turkey’s ‘wealthless’ wealth fund” sold 10 percent of the Borsa Istanbul stock exchange to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund for $200 million, in another opaque deal criticized by the CHP.⁵⁷

TWF’s CEO, meanwhile, bragged that the Turkish sovereign wealth fund had bought 10 percent of Borsa Istanbul “for a much lower amount” in December 2019 from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).⁵⁸ EBRD exited Borsa Istanbul hastily after Ankara appointed Atilla, Halkbank’s former deputy CEO, as head of the stock exchange. Atilla had been convicted in U.S. court for his role in the aforementioned multibillion-dollar scheme to evade Iran sanctions.⁵⁹

When TWF relieved Ziraat of its nonperforming $1.6 billion loan, it also injected $3 billion into Turkey’s three public lenders, including Ziraat Bank.⁶⁰ Since TWF is cash-strapped, it disclosed plans to “issue debt securities” in May 2020 for state-owned banks to “purchase at market price.”⁶¹ It appears Ziraat Bank’s purchase of TWF’s debt securities, which in turn funded a capital injection in Ziraat Bank, also helped TWF relieve Ziraat Bank of its $1.6 billion nonperforming loan. Moreover, Hüseyin Aydın, Ziraat Bank’s CEO, sits on the boards of TWF and Turkcell – all three parties involved in this troubling chain of financial transactions.

What might appear controversial from a governance perspective represents the triumph of Erdoğan’s effort to solidify his control over the country’s leading telecommunications company. The reshuffle allowed Erdoğan to appoint five out of Turkcell’s nine board members.⁶² It is ironic that a saga that started in 2014 ostensibly to prevent Russian control of Turkcell ended up increasing Russian billionaire Fridman’s stake while also giving Erdoğan full rein over the company.

As a postscript, market-savvy Fridman, less than a month after an October 2020 overhaul of Turkcell’s ownership structure, exploited a short-lived lira rally to sell 5 percent of Turkcell shares for about $205 million, getting a much better return on his investment than Sweden’s Telia.⁶³ Fridman’s remaining 19.8 percent stake is subject to a 12-month lock-up.⁶⁴

Lingering Questions

Although Erdoğan’s bid for control over Turkcell appears complete, Turkey’s opposition continues to probe the irregularities in this complex chain of transactions. On January 14, CHP Deputy Chairman Faik Öztrak filed questions with Turkey’s minister of treasury and finance, challenging the terms of the deal presented in Ziraat Bank’s press release.⁶⁵ One of Öztrak’s inquiries is about the value of Cukurova Finance’s 13.8 percent stake used to cover its nonperforming loan to Ziraat Bank. As Öztrak points out, if Telia’s 24 percent stake in Turkcell was worth $530 million in June 2020, then how can Cukurova Finance’s 13.8 percent stake settle the BVI-based company’s $1.6 billion debt to Ziraat Bank?

Meanwhile, Turkish journalists continue to question why Turkcell shares that TWF took over from Telia and Cukurova Finance ended up with a new subsidiary of TWF instead of with the sovereign wealth fund itself.⁶⁶ That subsidiary, TVF Bilgi Teknolojileri İletişim Hizmetleri Yatırım Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi (TVF BTIH), is an Istanbul-based joint stock company established on June 5, 2020, with registered capital of only 5 million Turkish liras ($740,000). According to Turkcell’s disclosures to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on June 17, 2020, and to the Public Disclosure Platform of Turkey’s Central Securities Depository on September 11, 2020, a company with less than $1 million of registered capital now controls Turkcell, which has a market capitalization of $4.8 billion.⁶⁷

Turkcell claims the new structure, which created a new class of privileged shares that comprise 15 percent of the company’s total shares and are owned entirely by TWF through TVF BTIH, hence granting TWF the power to elect five out of nine members of Turkcell’s board, will improve governance and protect minority shareholders.⁶⁸ This assertion is highly questionable. The irregularities resulting from the various dealings among TWF, Ziraat Bank, and Turkcell leave much room to improve corporate governance and protect shareholders.

In the short run, Turkcell’s minority shareholders might actually find the stability provided by Erdoğan’s influence preferable to board infighting that had pushed investors away. Given Erdoğan’s track record, however, the current arrangement may prove risky in the long run, not only for the company but also for its shareholders. TWF, Ziraat Bank, and Turkcell are likely to be embroiled in the Turkish president’s bid to consolidate political and economic power through these entities and others.

U.S. regulators and prosecutors should continue to scrutinize Turkish entities Erdoğan uses to pursue his domestic and global agenda and the potential illicit transactions carried out through them. Resisting the Turkish president’s attempts to scuttle the ongoing federal case against Halkbank on charges of evading Iran sanctions would be a good start.⁶⁹

Source: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/memos/2021/02/26/turkeys-ziraat-bank-under-scrutiny/

By Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, opinion contributor — 08/31/21 09:30 AM EDT 5 The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

When I think about Social Security, I think about MacGyver. You know, the 1980s heartthrob who could defuse a bomb with a paperclip. (The show has even been rebooted) Bear with me. Time and time again, MacGyver would wait until the very last second to stave off disaster. With one second left on the clock, he would wiggle a wire, preventing some giant explosion. You know, sort of like how the U.S. treats the Social Security Trust Fund. The last amendments to the program to ensure its solvency were passed in April 1983, three months before its Trust Fund was to run out.

Well, the clock is ticking again. If nothing is done, the Social Security Trustees estimate that by 2034, the Trust Fund will be depleted. When that happens, the program will continue to function, but benefits will be cut by more than 20 percent. This reduction would obviously be a problem for the whopping one quarter of seniors who receive almost all of their income from the program. But it also has implications for an issue that has been gaining attention in the wake of COVID-19 — the racial wealth gap.

By any measure, the racial wealth gap is extreme. For example, using survey data from 2019, researchers at the Federal Reserve report that the median Black household had 15 percent the wealth of the median white one. In technical terms, wealth is ridiculously unequal.

While these survey-based analyses are valuable, they usually miss an important source of wealth — Social Security. The problem is that many people think of Social Security not as a source of wealth, but as a source of income. Maybe they should go annuity shopping. For a single male at age 65 to buy an annuity that pays $1,500 a month for life — roughly the average Social Security benefit — it would take about $300,000 of wealth.

And, according to research by myself and Wenliang Hou, the exclusion of Social Security is important. Our calculations focused on the wealth of people ages 51-56, i.e., approaching retirement. Excluding Social Security, the typical Black household had $24,300 wealth, with $176,900 for the typical White household. That ratio of 14 percent was similar to other survey-based measures. When we add Social Security, those same numbers become $172,000 and $377,800 for Black households and white ones, respectively. That 14 percent Black-to-white ratio? It increases to 46 percent. That’s over a three-fold increase — but 46 percent is still not good.

The reason for this increase in relative wealth is that Social Security is fairly equally distributed, for two reasons. First, Social Security is nearly universal for employed people. By comparison, employer-sponsored plans are less available for Black workers. Second, Social Security benefits are progressive, i.e., the program replaces a larger share of lower-income people’s income. Since Black households still make less than 60 percent what white households make, this feature of Social Security reduces inequality. This progressivity stands in contrast to 401(k)-type retirement plans. In these voluntary plans, higher-income people are more likely to be able to afford to contribute, meaning these plans can exaggerate income inequality.

The thing is that many bipartisan approaches to addressing Social Security’s funding shortfall consider benefit reductions. And, without proper consideration, those benefit reductions can sometimes be unintentionally regressive — they can hurt lower-income workers the most.

For example, consider something as seemingly neutral as an increase in the full retirement age (FRA) from 67 to 69. This increase is actually a benefit cut — anyone who doesn’t move back their retirement date would see their benefits cut by roughly 13 percent. Black workers are less likely to be able to respond with delay, because their jobs are more likely to be highly or moderately physical, impeding longer careers. So, the increase in the FRA is regressive.

Which gets me back to that ticking bomb. Right now, every financial services company seems to have a plan to lessen the racial wealth gap. But maybe we should … you know … fix the existing program that does so much to lessen the wealth gap. The longer we wait, the less likely we are to be able to carefully consider a combination of revenue increases and benefit cuts that maintains one of Social Security’s most important features — it’s progressivity. Worse, the more likely we are to let the clock run out. The resulting explosion will only worsen an incredibly unequal part of American life.

Geoffrey Sanzenbacher is an associate professor of the practice at Boston College and a research fellow at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/570080-one-way-to-address-the-wealth-gap-stop-macgyvering-social-security