A lawmaker from Turkey’s main opposition New Party alleged Saturday that former family minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya and her husband made large gains by selling shares in Özata Denizcilik before the country’s investment fund crisis broke out in September.
Zeynel Emre, an İstanbul lawmaker and the New Party’s spokesperson, said Kaya bought the shipbuilder’s shares in April for 63.4 million lira and sold them in September for 1.34 billion lira ($27 million). He alleged that her husband, İlyas Kaya, invested 99.7 million lira and received 826 million lira ($17 million) from sales. He made the allegations at a party meeting in İstanbul on Saturday.
Emre alleged that they sold before September 16, when the fund crisis spilled into the stock market. He suggested that the timing raised questions about advance knowledge.
Kaya served as family and social policies minister under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and is now a deputy chair of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), responsible for social policy. A reporter from Notbir reached her by phone to seek a response to Emre’s allegations; she said she was unavailable and ended the call without addressing them.
Emre’s accusation came a day after Turkey’s Capital Markets Board (SPK) announced criminal complaints against 11 people over transactions in Özata Denizcilik shares under a law against market manipulation. It barred those 11 from trading on organized markets for two years and canceled all market licenses held by five of them for the duration of the ban. The board also restricted two Tera companies from trading Özata shares for their own accounts. Neither Kaya nor her husband appears among the people named in the bulletin, which makes no finding about Emre’s claim.
Özata disclosed Friday that a court had jailed its chairman, Özdemir Ataseven, and deputy chairman, Gökhan Ataseven, pending trial in the investigation. The company said the rulings were precautionary and did not establish guilt.
Turkey’s fund crisis began when investment funds with large positions in shares that were hard to sell could not meet requests from investors seeking their money back. The SPK ordered the liquidation of 131 funds run by seven asset managers, covering about $18 billion in reported assets and 455,758 investors. The reported asset value does not show what investors will recover. President Erdoğan said the trouble did not threaten the wider financial system and promised legal action against those responsible.
Opposition lawmakers had alleged that some investors received advance warning before the September 17 freeze and withdrew money ahead of others.
