Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
An Iranian investor entangled in US sanctions over his cryptocurrency activities turned to Turkey to establish legal residence after years of failed attempts elsewhere, using Turkish documents and banking records to withdraw part of his frozen funds from the bankrupt US-based exchange Bittrex.
But even as Turkey provided him with the crucial documentation that finally unlocked his assets, his ambitious effort to convince a Delaware court that he was owed $88 million in damages collapsed, leaving him with only a fraction of the fortune he claimed to have lost.
Azim Ghader’s journey began in June 2017, when he opened his Bittrex account while residing in Iran and quickly deposited more than $1.3 million worth of Bitcoin and other digital tokens. By October of that year, Bittrex, facing a subpoena from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), froze all accounts linked to Iran.
For Ghader, the freeze set off years of maneuvering to convince the exchange he no longer lived in a sanctioned jurisdiction.
One of his first major moves was to secure a second nationality. In 2018 he obtained a Dominican passport through the island’s controversial “citizenship by investment” program, paying around $100,000. Although he never resided in Dominica, he hoped the passport would convince Bittrex that he was no longer an Iranian resident.
The exchange refused to accept it as proof of residence, and the US court later viewed this attempt as evidence that Ghader was a sophisticated operator aware of sanctions compliance loopholes.
The US court rejected an $88 million damages suit by Iranian investor Azim Ghader, who had used Turkish documents to gain access to his frozen Bitcoin account in the United States:
It was Turkey, not Dominica, that eventually broke the deadlock. In 2021 Ghader began presenting Turkish documentation to Bittrex, including a tax identification letter, though at first this was not enough. By 2023, however, he compiled a full portfolio: an official Turkish certificate of residency, a rental contract, utility bills and Turkish bank account statements. This time, Bittrex recognized the paperwork as sufficient evidence of residence outside Iran. The company permitted him to withdraw most of his funds, roughly $273,000, shortly before filing for bankruptcy.
The court’s ruling shows that Turkey was the only jurisdiction that provided Ghader with a durable solution. His Dominican passport failed, as did his attempts with Dubai and Luxembourg addresses. It was Ankara’s residence system and banking channels that ultimately gave him access to his assets. This outcome reflects a broader trend: Turkey has become an important sanctions gray zone, offering residence, banking services, crypto channels and even citizenship to individuals cut off from Western systems.
Turkey runs one of the world’s largest residency-by-investment and citizenship-for-sale programs. Since 2017, foreigners have been able to acquire Turkish citizenship by purchasing real estate, investing in companies or depositing funds in Turkish banks. At its peak, citizenship could be obtained for as little as $250,000 in property purchases, though the threshold has since risen to $400,000.
The Islamist government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ensured that no criminal or administrative investigations were launched into the origins of funds brought into Turkey while offering tax exemptions and incentives for large sums of money whose provenance was never questioned.
Thousands of Iranians, Russians and Middle Eastern nationals have used these programs to secure Turkish passports or residence permits, often while their home countries face US or EU sanctions. Turkish government data show that Iranians consistently rank among the top foreign property buyers in Istanbul, Antalya and Ankara, cities where residence applications tied to real estate are routinely processed.
The country’s crypto market adds another layer. Turkey is among the top five globally in crypto trading volume, fueled by high inflation and a weak lira. At the same time it has been a compliance weak spot for global regulators. The spectacular collapse of the Thodex exchange in 2021, whose founder fled with an estimated $2 billion, underscored the risks. Binance has chosen Istanbul as a key hub, yet continues to face questions over its due diligence in monitoring sanction-linked flows.
For actors like Ghader, Turkey’s large, dollarized crypto economy and flexible residency channels make it uniquely positioned as both a safe haven and a gateway back into the financial system.
Western governments have long flagged Turkey’s role in sanctions evasion. US Treasury reports have identified Turkish companies and intermediaries as central players in Iran’s gold-for-oil networks, Russian sanctions-busting schemes after the Ukraine invasion, and more recently in cryptocurrency transactions that even funded terrorist organizations like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
In 2021 the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) put Turkey on its “gray list” for deficiencies in combating money laundering and terror financing, underscoring systemic vulnerabilities. Although Turkey was removed from the list in 2024, FATF issued a series of warnings that Ankara still had significant work to do to clean up its financial system.
Against this backdrop, Ghader’s use of Turkey was hardly incidental. For years his attempts with Dominica, Dubai and Luxembourg failed because they lacked credible evidence of physical residence. Only Turkey’s system provided documents — recognized by Bittrex and presented in US court filings — that were detailed enough to pass compliance checks.
He argued that Bittrex’s freeze had cost him the opportunity to capitalize on the bull runs of 2017 and 2021 and that the company’s negligence and alleged fraud deprived him of transformative wealth. The court flatly rejected these theories, pointing to the Terms of Service that governed every Bittrex customer account. Those terms gave the exchange broad discretion to suspend accounts for compliance reasons and explicitly prohibited claims for consequential damages, lost profits or punitive awards. The judge emphasized that “a customer cannot claim damages for hypothetical investment gains barred by the very agreement he accepted when opening his account.”
His claims of emotional distress were dismissed as unsupported by evidence. The court highlighted that Ghader had actively continued business ventures during this period and was not the victim of sudden or unexpected harm.
The Delaware judge noted that Turkey’s residence documents were decisive in allowing Ghader to access his funds but rejected his argument that they should also entitle him to the speculative profits underlying his $88 million damages claim. His claims were limited to the assets still tied to his account (about $4,000 left after his withdrawals in Turkey).
The ruling leaves Ghader with little more than a symbolic victory. He successfully leveraged Turkey to extract his original funds but failed to persuade US judges to rewrite the consequences of sanctions compliance or the volatility of the crypto market.
The ruling thus closes one chapter in the collapse of Bittrex, but it also illustrates how Turkey occupies a unique space in the global sanctions and crypto ecosystem. It is both a NATO member aligned with the West and a financial hub where sanctioned nationals can purchase property, open bank accounts, secure residence and trade in digital assets.
For Ghader, Turkey provided the only real escape route from the sanctions freeze that had trapped his funds since 2017, serving as the central node in his effort to re-establish financial legitimacy after being cut off elsewhere. The Ghader case is just one example of a recurring pattern in Turkey, where sanctioned individuals and entities often seek to bypass Western restrictions.
