A fraud probe is digging into the allegedly shady past of Mustafa Sarıgül, a former mayor and party leader who now serves as a lawmaker for the opposition New Party (YP). The account of a secret witness is expected to further corner the veteran politician who rose to political fame as mayor of Istanbul’s upscale Şişli district.
Allegations include that Sarıgül and his family collected billions of dollars from zoning windfall while he was the mayor of Şişli and invested it in Altınbaş Holding, a luxury hotel in Antalya’s Belek, shopping malls and properties abroad. Top names of the Altınbaş conglomerate were arrested last week in a separate investigation linked to funds turmoil that netted several businesspeople while Sofu Altınbaş, another top figure in the conglomerate, was detained in connection with probe into the Sarıgül family.
The investigation into the Sarıgül family was launched when two German businessmen claimed Sarıgül defrauded them after a deal they signed with him and his family for joint investment. Sarıgül’s two sons were detained in the investigation earlier this month while the lawmaker is so far immune from investigation due to his parliamentary immunity.
A secret witness testifying to prosecutors exposed more alleged wrongdoings of the family while authorities detained Altınbaş, Titanic Hotels Deputy Chair Temel Aygün and former municipal bureaucrats at Şişli municipality and several businesspeople. Altınbaş allegedly helped laundering 600 million euros in bribes. Sarıgül’s personal bodyguard, Ömer Demir, also sought to collaborate with prosecutors in exchange for a lenient sentence.
Mustafa Sarıgül is accused of using his public authority to promise a 1 billion euro ($1.12 billion) fund to German businessmen while those businessmen who claimed to have been defrauded were threatened after handing audio recordings in their possession regarding their deal with Sarıgül to journalist Murat Ağırel. Sixteen suspects, including Sarıgül’s sons, Emir Sarıgül and Ömer Sarıgül, his ex-wife Aylin Kotil and Murat Ağırel, had previously been arrested.
Most recently, Cihan Tunç, described as Emir Sarıgül’s right-hand man, former private secretary Çağlar Sezgin and Ümit İlker Avcı, who was linked to a currency exchange office, were remanded in custody and sent to prison. They had been referred to the courthouse as part of an operation investigating an alleged attempt to obtain a “manipulation report” from the National Criminal Bureau in exchange for $200,000 concerning a footage leaked to the press. Ömer Demir, Mustafa Sarıgül’s personal bodyguard, and Atakan Eren were placed under house arrest. Demir was allegedly the man having sex with Sarıgül in the video leaked to the press. At the time, Sarıgül has denied the authenticity of the video, producing a report from the National Criminal Bureau, a private expertise firm, which said the footage was fake. With the latest arrests, the total number of suspects in custody in the major money-laundering investigation rose to 19.
The most striking aspect of the operation was that the 12 people detained were directly linked to the bribery and money-laundering mechanism exposed in the prosecutor’s statement by the secret witness codenamed “A3M2LK48.”
In the statement, the secret witness alleged that during Mustafa Sarıgül’s tenure as mayor of Şişli, he used the Altınbaş family to launder billions of dollars in bribes allegedly obtained through zoning-related windfalls from major projects such as Kanyon, MetroCity and Maya Center, prominent commercial hubs of Istanbul. The witness claimed that money disseminated for laundering through a marriage in 2008 between Emir Sarıgül and a heiress of the Altınbaş family was transferred back to Sarıgül as 600 million euros during the divorce proceedings in 2019.