Reported by Chadwick Moore

(Excerpt shared below. To read full report, go to: https://nypost.com/2025/10/11/world-news/istanbuls-grand-bazaar-is-propping-up-venezuela-russias-economy-as-a-shocking-250m-money-laundering-market/)

Called “the world’s first shopping mall,” Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar entrances millions of visitors annually with its myriad displays of exotic jewels and spices, elaborate carpets for sale and constant hustle.  

But hardly even hidden behind the smiles of its stalls’ fez-capped salesmen and the city’s ubiquitous scent of döner kebab, a much more sinister business of dark international money laundering takes place.

A $30 million seizure of smuggled jewels and diamonds from the market last April —and February’s arrest of 37 suspects in a vast Turkish money laundering operation — was the tip of the iceberg, experts say.

An estimated $900 million a year in sanctioned Venezuelan gold alone is moving alongside holidaymakers through the crowded market stalls, exchanged for Russian and Iranian commodities — keeping the economies of those sanctioned nations afloat.

“It’s been an epicenter of money laundering for a long time. The gold markets in the Grand Bazaar are quite significant,” Louise Shelley, a professor emerita at George Mason University and specialist on transnational crime, told The Post.