Turkey Arrests Hundreds of Money-Laundering Suspects

Date: 02 October 2018 - 22:14

News ID: ۵۸۰۰۸

ISTANBUL (Dispatches) – Turkish police detained 280 suspects in a money-laundering investigation into the transfer of about 2.5 billion lira ($419 million) worth of foreign currency to bank accounts abroad, state media said on Tuesday.
Police teams launched raids across 40 provinces and had arrest warrants for a total 417 people, state-owned Anadolu news agency reported. CNN Turk broadcast video of masked special operations police in combat gear and armed with automatic rifles entering an apartment block during one raid.
Police, the prosecutor and other judicial authorities declined to comment on the investigation.
The probe was aimed at those who "targeted the economic and financial security of the Turkish Republic,” the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office said, according to CNN Turk.
The issue of foreign money transfers has become politically sensitive in Turkey, which is in the throes of a currency crisis. The lira has fallen about 40 percent against the dollar this year, prompting President Tayyip Erdogan to warn Turks against sending money abroad if it is not for investment.
"We will not forgive those who resort to smuggling money abroad if it is not to grow, develop and spread their business, trade and investments,” Erdogan said in a speech to business leaders in April.
There were no indications of any links between the current investigation and Erdogan’s push to encourage Turks to keep their money in Turkey.
In another development, Turkey called on Germany to extradite 136 people with suspected links to groups that played a key role in orchestrating the July 2016 coup attempt against the government in Ankara.
Turkey's English-language Hurriyet Daily News newspaper said on Monday that Erdogan told reporters on a return flight after a visit to Berlin last week that Turkey had delivered a list of 136 people for extradition from Germany following the failed coup.
"I don't know all of the names but it is a substantial list. A list of 136 people in Germany," Hurriyet quoted the Turkish president as saying, without specifying which groups or individuals were included.
The paper, however, quoted Erdogan as saying that Germany should be more effective in countering members of the network of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group and the far-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C).
Erdogan also said his administration had in the past delivered documents to Berlin containing the names of more than 4,000 people with links to the PKK, adding that there was a difference in the "understanding of terror" between Turkey and both Germany and the United States.