Istanbul (AFP) – Turkish prosecutors have moved to freeze the assets of a top governing party official and former minister who resigned at the weekend over allegations she profited from an investment fund crisis. In a brief statement late Tuesday, prosecutors said they had sent “a letter concerning the freezing of all assets” of Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya and her husband, Ilyas Kaya, to “all the relevant institutions”.
Turkey has been wrestling with the fallout from an investment fund scandal that erupted this month with the collapse of what officials have called a “Ponzi-like” scheme. Following allegations by Turkey’s main opposition Yeni Parti that she and her husband made millions trading in such shares, Kaya, the deputy head of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party, said late Saturday she was resigning. While admitting nothing, Kaya, who was Turkey’s family minister from 2016 to 2018, said she was taking “political responsibility” to ensure that any investigation could be conducted “independently, impartially”.
At a news conference earlier Saturday, a Yeni spokesman, Gokhan Gunaydin, said the party was seeking clarification over claims that Kaya invested 63 million lira ($1.3 million) in shares in April and sold them in September, earning a profit of around 1.3 billion lira ($26.5 million). He also said her husband had allegedly invested 100 million lira and earned back 826 million lira, collectively netting the pair an alleged profit of nearly 2.2 billion lira ($45 million). Gunaydin said it was “clear” Kaya had received insider information and pledged that the party would unveil more names this week.
– ‘Robbery of the century’ –
The scandal is expected to dominate the coming agenda in parliament, which formally reopens on Thursday following the summer recess. “This name is the tip of the iceberg,” Yeni leader Ozgur Ozel told a party meeting on Wednesday, describing the scandal as “the robbery of the century”.
On Tuesday, Erdogan held a three-hour meeting with economic aides over the fund crisis, after earlier defending his party’s record. “The AK Party is a clean party, just as its name suggests; it is a party true to its name. No one can tarnish this party’s purity or stain that cleanliness,” he told party cadres. “Without looking at their own pitch-black records, they even try to give us lessons in morality and political ethics. ‘Get lost,’ I tell them,” he said of his political opponents.
The crisis erupted in mid-September when several funds said they were unable to satisfy investor redemption demands, sending Istanbul’s main stock exchange tumbling. A day later, regulators moved to address the crisis by placing into liquidation seven companies that hold 131 investment funds, whose assets are reportedly worth around $17 billion, with the Capital Markets Board (SPK) saying more than 455,000 individual investors were affected.
hmw-dla/js
© 2024 AFP
