Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States
The Supreme Court ruled that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act — the law governing how foreign governments can be sued in U.S. courts — applies only to civil lawsuits and cannot shield a foreign state-owned bank from criminal prosecution.
The decision clears federal prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against Halkbank, a Turkish government-owned bank accused of a multi-billion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran, though the case returns to a lower court to resolve a remaining immunity question.
How it got here: Halkbank moved to dismiss its federal indictment on immunity grounds; the district court denied the motion; the Second Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Halkbank is a major commercial bank majority-owned by the Turkish government. U.S. prosecutors charged it with orchestrating a multi-year scheme to launder billions of dollars of Iranian oil and gas money through the global financial system in violation of U.S. economic sanctions, and with lying to U.S. Treasury officials to conceal the scheme. Two individuals, including a former Halkbank executive, were already convicted for their roles. Halkbank argued it could not be prosecuted at all because, as a government-owned entity, it enjoys the same legal immunity foreign governments have from civil lawsuits.
The question before the Court
A Turkish government-owned bank is accused of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Can it use the law that protects foreign governments from civil lawsuits to also escape criminal prosecution?
The Court's answer
No — the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act does not protect Halkbank from criminal prosecution. The Court held that the FSIA is a comprehensive scheme designed exclusively for civil lawsuits against foreign governments. Every operative provision of the statute — its jurisdictional grant, its venue rules, its procedures for serving papers and entering judgments, its remedies — speaks entirely in civil-case terms. The statute says not a word about criminal proceedings, and Congress does not hide major policy decisions in silence.
The Court also rejected Halkbank's argument that one FSIA provision — a broad statement that foreign states "shall be immune" from U.S. courts — reaches criminal cases. That provision works in tandem with a neighboring section that limits jurisdiction to civil cases only; reading it to cover criminal prosecutions would produce an incoherent statute that bounces between civil and criminal scope from section to section. With the FSIA out of the picture, the separate question of whether older common-law immunity principles might still bar the prosecution was sent back to the lower court for full consideration.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Foreign government-owned companies and banks operating in the U.S. cannot automatically invoke the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to block federal criminal charges. Prosecutors pursuing sanctions violations and other crimes by state-owned foreign enterprises now have firmer legal ground — though courts must still work out whether older common-law immunity principles offer any separate protection in criminal cases.
What changes now
The criminal prosecution of Halkbank in federal court may continue. The case returns to the Second Circuit to address whether common-law immunity — principles courts developed before the FSIA — might separately bar the prosecution or limit it in some way. The government argues common law provides no such shield for commercial entities when the Executive Branch itself brings charges; Halkbank disagrees. How the Second Circuit resolves that question will determine whether Halkbank ultimately stands trial.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly did not decide whether common-law immunity protects Halkbank or any other foreign state-owned entity from criminal prosecution — that goes back to lower courts. The Court also left open whether state criminal prosecutions of foreign sovereigns might be reviewable by the Supreme Court, and whether foreign-affairs preemption could block such state-level cases.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent in part — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch agreed that federal courts have jurisdiction over Halkbank under the general criminal jurisdiction statute, but he would apply the FSIA — not common law — to the immunity question. In his view, § 1604's broad language immunizing foreign states 'shall' be read as written, without grafting on a civil-only limitation the text does not contain. Applying the FSIA, he concluded that the commercial-activities exception defeats Halkbank's immunity claim anyway, so the prosecution may proceed — the same bottom line as the Second Circuit, reached through a simpler and more legally settled path. He criticized the majority for creating unnecessary uncertainty about what common-law standards lower courts should now apply.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Federal courts have jurisdiction over 'all offenses against the laws of the United States' under the general criminal jurisdiction statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3231. The Court refused to read an implied exception into that sweeping grant just because other, unrelated federal laws separately name foreign states — Congress's broad language reaches all defendants regardless of identity or status.
- The Court then examined the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a 1976 statute Congress designed as a comprehensive framework for resolving foreign-government immunity claims. The critical question was whether that framework extends beyond civil lawsuits to criminal prosecutions.
- The FSIA's text answers that question. Its opening provision grants courts jurisdiction over 'nonjury civil actions' against foreign states; its venue, removal, service-of-process, judgment, and counterclaim rules all speak exclusively in civil terms; and Congress described the Act as defining when foreign states are 'immune from suit' — not immune from criminal investigation or prosecution. The statute is completely silent on criminal matters, even though some criminal investigations of foreign-government-owned entities had already occurred by 1976.
- The Act's key immunity provision (28 U.S.C. § 1604 — which says foreign states 'shall be immune' from U.S. courts unless a statutory exception applies) cannot be read in isolation. It works hand-in-glove with the neighboring jurisdictional provision (§ 1330(a)), which reaches only civil cases. Reading both together, § 1604 operates exclusively within that civil universe — it does not silently strip the federal government of all power to criminally prosecute foreign state-owned entities.
- The Court drew on its earlier ruling in Samantar v. Yousuf (2010), which held that the FSIA's comprehensive civil scheme does not automatically cover suits against individual foreign officials. By the same logic, the FSIA's carefully calibrated civil procedures do not extend to the entirely separate legal regime of criminal proceedings, which Congress housed in a different title of the U.S. Code altogether.
- Because the FSIA does not apply, the remaining question — whether common-law immunity principles developed before the FSIA was enacted might independently bar criminal prosecution of a foreign state-owned commercial entity — had not been fully considered by the lower court. The Court declined to decide that question and sent it back to the Second Circuit.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Samantar v. Yousuf (560 U.S. 305)
Confirms that the FSIA's comprehensive civil scheme does not extend to every category of cases, supporting its inapplicability to criminal proceedings.
Distinguishes Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corp. (488 U.S. 428)
Its 'sole basis' statement about the FSIA was limited to displacing civil jurisdictional grants, not the criminal jurisdiction statute.