Ahmet Çiçek, owner of an advertising company who was detained in a corruption case involving Istanbul’s former mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu and his close circle, collaborated with authorities for a plea bargain. Çiçek detailed how people close to Imamoğlu at Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) were involved in graft and irregularities in public tenders. He was released after testifying against key figures in the case, including Murat Ongun, an adviser to Imamoğlu who also chaired a media company owned by IBB.
Çiçek is the second high-profile name to invoke leniency in exchange for information against corruption after Ertan Yıldız, head of an IBB subsidiary, who testified against Imamoğlu and other suspects in the case.
He told investigators that all advertising companies seeking deals with IBB for billboard rentals and other businesses were required to be approved by Ongun since 2019, and Ongun personally instructed companies how much they should pay, bypassing legal tender processes.
In his testimony, partially published by Anadolu Agency (AA) on Monday, Çiçek also confessed how he arranged fake invoices for Murat Kapki, another businessperson who is a suspect in Imamoğlu’s corruption case. He said that he identified Kapki as one of the people who accompanied Imamoğlu and other suspects for a secret meeting at an Istanbul hotel. Imamoğlu’s meeting has recently made the headlines as one of his bodyguards was caught on camera as he blocked security cameras before the meeting in footage included in the corruption case.
Over the weekend, statements of Ertan Yıldız surfaced in the Turkish media as he delved into corruption within IBB. Prosecutors accuse Imamoğlu and others of profiting from rigged tenders and bribery in exchange for permits the municipality issued to businesses in Türkiye’s most populated city.
Yıldız served as head of the IBB department in charge of subsidiaries and was an adviser to Imamoğlu before he was arrested. Yıldız worked in various capacities with Imamoğlu since the latter’s tenure as mayor of Istanbul’s Beylikdüzü district, after first meeting him in 2013 in that district.
He told prosecutors that under Imamoğlu’s tenure, most public tenders launched by IBB were awarded to firms based in Beylikdüzü or related to that district. He said Imamoğlu also handed over a lucrative contract to a company run by Murat Gülibrahimoğlu, a fugitive businessperson. The contract involved earthmoving operations across the city, where construction barely stops. Yıldız said the operations raked in revenues amounting to $200 million and could be handled by an IBB subsidiary, but Imamoğlu granted it to Gülibrahimoğlu’s company, in which he was secretly a business partner. He said the company resorted to shady practices such as double billing and fake invoices to further boost the income that was later transferred abroad.
He claimed Imamoğlu also reaped benefits from granting permits to buildings overlooking the Bosporus, with exquisite views of the waterway. Yıldız said Imamoğlu ordered two hotels expanding their premises in Bosporus skylines to pay $27 million, effectively overlooking illegal expansion. He said most payments or bribes were collected by the brother of Fatih Keleş, another IBB official, and accumulated in an office owned by Keleş. He stated that Imamoğlu was aware and in control of the money flow.
Yıldız said Imamoğlu told IBB officials that they were under surveillance, about eight months before the anti-graft operation led to his arrest.
Another allegation voiced by Yıldız was awarding the ownership of a vast 49-acre plot of land owned by IBB’s bus company to an associated company. Yıldız said Imamoğlu told them to hand over the land to Adem Soytekin, a close associate, through a tender, but another company won the tender. He said Soytekin then contacted the owner of that company and threatened him that construction on those lands would be “disrupted” if he did not cooperate with him.