In private conversations with potential clients, Kian portrayed himself as a rainmaker for Flynn, tapping into connections cultivated during a five-year tenure as a director at the U.S. Export-Import Bank, according to one person who worked with the firm.
Alptekin told Reuters in May that his firm hired Flynn Intel Group to research Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen’s activities in the United States, which he suspected were “poisoning” relations between the United States and Turkey.
Like Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Alptekin blamed a failed coup in Turkey last July on followers of Gulen.
Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, has denied involvement in the attempted coup and dismisses Turkey’s allegations that he heads a terrorist organization.
Kian oversaw key elements of the project that emerged, including a still-unfinished documentary on Gulen, according to two people involved in the project.
Inovo paid Flynn Intel Group a total of $530,000, starting in September, according to a Justice Department filing by the company in March. Flynn Intel Group paid $80,000 to Inovo in “consultancy fees,” according to the filing, which does not provide more detail on why payments were made in both directions.
On Sept. 19, Kian and Flynn met in New York with Turkey’s foreign minister and energy minister, who is Erdogan’s son-in-law, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.
In late October, Kian invited staff of the House Homeland Security Committee to Flynn Intel Group’s headquarters in Virginia. The meeting was called to show off new mobile phone security technology, but Kian also used the opportunity to try to get a congressional hearing on Gulen, according to a person at the meeting.
At that point, the Flynn Intel Group had only disclosed its work for Alptekin’s Inovo in a filing with Congress. It had not mentioned Inovo’s ties to Turkey.
When Justice Department officials became aware months later that Kian and other Flynn Intel Group officials had met with Turkish officials they insisted on a fuller disclosure, people involved in those discussions said.
The Flynn Intel Group made the more detailed disclosure in its March filing with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act that said the work that Flynn and Kian did for Inovo “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.”
