Graft probe moved to earlier date after attempts to thwart it discovered

The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office moved up the launch date of the probe to prevent suspects from getting rid of evidence after Güler and his son Barış Güler, who suspected that their phones were being tapped, attempted to stop the operation, the daily said.  

A total of 52 people have been taken into custody as part of the probe jointly carried out, in İstanbul and Ankara, by the financial crimes and anti-organized crime departments of the İstanbul Security Directorate. The sons of Interior Minister Muammer Güler, Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan and Environment and Urban Planning Minister Erdoğan Bayraktar are among those detained. Other detainees included the mayor of İstanbul's Fatih district, Mustafa Demir, Turkish construction mogul Ali Ağaoğlu, Emlak Konut General Director Murat Kurum, Halkbank General Manager Süleyman Aslan, Iranian businessman of Azeri origin Reza Zarrab and bureaucrats from the Environment and Economy ministries.

A summary of the investigation's proceedings was sent to Parliament on Wednesday evening, and prosecutors asked Parliament to strip four AK party ministers -- the economy, interior and environment and urban planning ministers, as well as EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış -- of their parliamentary immunity. The Cabinet-level officials stand accuse of accepting bribes, except for Bayraktar, who has been accused of involvement in contractors' illicit practices.  

The second reason the probe was launched earlier than expected, according to the daily, was that Güler ordered intelligence teams to thwart legal wiretaps and surveillance ordered by the prosecutors in charge of the investigation.

The third reason the daily listed was the possibility that Zarrab and his men would flee to Iran. The recent easing of sanctions against Iran would make the option more attractive, given that their economic activities were mostly linked to the country.

“It was noted that the fact that some men with whom Zarrab was, for a period, engaged in illegal [business] activities [in Turkey] fled to Iran makes it all the more possible for such a thing to happen,” the daily said.

Investigators first became aware of attempts to thwart the probe on Oct. 8 this year, while listening in on a conversation between Rüçhan Bayar, a person close to Güler, and Zarrab, who asked Bayar if their phones were being wiretapped, the daily said. In response, Bayar allegedly said: “If there was anything like that you would be the first one to know about it.”

Zarrab, who later took up the issue with Güler, was told that their phones were not being wiretapped by the intelligence department of the Security General Directorate (EGM). Investigators learned from a phone conversation between Zarrab and the interior minister's son, Barış Güler, that same day, that a delivery person who worked for Zarrab suspected that he was being followed when he delivered a bribe to Barış, the daily reported. In the course of the conversation, Güler said that the persons concerned could be secret service agents, which astonished Zarrab, according to the daily, who asked why they hadn't found out earlier that they were under surveillance.

The daily reported that in another phone conversation, Barış promised Zarrab on Oct. 25 that he would take all the necessary measures against any surveillance. In another phone call on the same day, wiretaps recorded Barış as saying: “In a day or two, we will find out [who is involved].”

In an Oct. 26 telephone call between Barış and Özgür Özdemir, another suspect in the corruption investigation, Özdemir said he suspected that the financial crimes unit or intelligence department of the İstanbul Security Directorate was on their tail. According to the daily, he was recorded telling Barış that they needed to find out, without drawing much attention to themselves, whether the financial crimes unit was involved.   

In a conversation between Zarrab and one of his men, Ab­dul­lah Hap­pa­ni, on Oct. 25, Zarrab reveals anxiety over the frequency of certain transfers: “I've said a thousand times that this should have been done in two or three [deliveries].”  

Wiretaps of a telephone conversation between Güler and his son on Oct. 26 showed that they were aware that the suspects were being wiretapped and followed. When Güler's son Barış said that Özgür might also have been wiretapped and that Barış had warned Tunç about it, Güler responded: “Never do it that way again. I'll look into it. Be careful my son. Also be careful on the phone.” It was later discovered that Tunç, to whom Barış referred, is Tunç Kuş, deputy director of the Public Security Department, the daily said.

After these conversations, the police intelligence unit was instructed, according to the daily, to intervene in a bid to thwart the wiretaps and surveillance the suspects was subjected to. The suspects then, according to the daily, hatched a plot to discover who was conducting the surveillance. But the plan failed when the police team investigating the suspects figured out that there were intelligence teams after them.

The technical surveillance police team, acting on the prosecutor's orders, on Nov. 11, went to Zarrab's house in the Beykoz district of İstanbul. The team discovered that a police car belonging to the intelligence unit, a Toyota registered as 34 ZP 7334, was parked not far from the entrance to Zarrab's house. According to Bugün, the car was part of an attempt by the İstanbul Security Directorate's intelligence unit to uncover the secret graft investigation. Following Tuesday's raids, five police officers and chiefs of various departments of the İstanbul Security Directorate, among others, were removed from duty because they were unaware of the probe and thus failed to report it to their superiors. The head of the intelligence unit, however, has not been removed.     

Zarrab became even more concerned when his alleged illegal economic activities, under the surveillance of the Finance Ministry's Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) as well as other agencies, started to come out into the open, the daily said. Adem Gelgeç, a business partner of Zarrab, made, in a statement on Feb. 25, 2013, a good deal of confessions to tax inspectors. When it was discovered by the police that Zarrab and his men had decided to flee to Iran, and that the intelligence officers within the police had prepared a file to be presented to politicians about the probe, the date of the operation against the suspects was moved forward, the daily said.   

A criminal organization allegedly headed by Zarrab, is claimed to have distributed to three ministers and their sons a total of TL 137 million ($66 million) in bribes to cloak fictitious exports and money laundering that the organization was engaged in.