boomerang wrote:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-25/turkey-sells-200-tons-of-secret-gold-to-iran.html
it seems that the ottoboys taught well all their subjects in the fine art of cooking books...
The below quote is from the above link by Boomer.
Trade Distortion
What the inquiry found makes life harder for those who try to read the tea leaves of the Turkish economy. The surge in exports was so rapid and so extensive -- gold transfers to Iran jumped from $53 million in 2011 to $6.5 billion in 2012 -- that it distorted Turkish trade figures, making the economy appear superficially stronger than it really was, said Atilla Yesilada, Turkey adviser at New York-based GlobalSource Partners Inc., an economic advisory firm.
“I don’t know what Caglayan’s motivations were, but he was a huge supporter of the gold trade with Iran,” said Yesilada in a phone interview from Istanbul. “It never made any economic sense. This is not the kind of export that’s associated with a strong economy. What was the purpose of the gold trade with Iran? We’ve never gotten an explanation.”
The reason why Gold was sent to Iran from Turkey was to circumvent the sanctions the Americans put on Iran not to be able to sell their oil with hard currency. Once Turkey was forced to obey the American sanctions as one of the last countries to do so, Turkey came up with the idea of using even "harder currency" to buy their oil from Iran, and that was to use Gold.
Turkey cooked the books both ways when it came to buying oil from Iran. First the Gold they used to purchase the Oil was shown as "Gold Export" to various Arab countries and not as payment for oil, which eventually found it's way to Iran as of payment for oil through the back door, and the Second cooking of the books came when they did not show the oil received with Gold payment as Import, since the oil received from Iran was not paid in hard currency, as if the oil came to Turkey as gift from Iran.
This played game showed greater export numbers to brag about and not so terrible Import number, also to brag about. It was the case of, "Heads I win, Tails you Lose", until the Americans finally stopped Turkey from trading Gold for Oil with Iran. Then there went the good Export and Import numbers up in smoke after cooking the books for so long.
doh!
