Cihan Ekşioğlu, ally of Turkish President Erdoğan, alleged to have laundered money for mafia
Cihan Ekşioğlu, an operative who was alleged to be an intermediary between the Turkish president’s ruling political party and mafia groups in Turkey and abroad has been put in the spotlight with recent revelations by mobster Sedat Peker, a former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Ekşioğlu’s name came up in connection with shady business
and political deals struck at the five-star luxury resort and hotel complex
that used to be known as Paramount in Turkey’s tourist destination of Bodrum.
The resort, taken over by Ekşioğlu allegedly under pressure and threats from
its ailing owner, Atilla Uras, had also become a venue for money laundering
activities for global mafia groups. A similar scheme is reportedly being run
under new ownership.
The resort was originally named Golden Savoy when it was
first launched in 2014 by its late founder, Uras. It was renamed Paramount
under Ekşioğlu and his friend Sezgin Baran Korkmaz, a racketeer who is wanted
in the US on charges of money laundering in the millions of dollars and wire
fraud and was recently arrested in Austria on an outstanding US warrant.
Turkish businessman Şaban Kayıkçı, also very close to
President Erdoğan, is the new owner of the resort. According to trade registry
filings, Kayıkçı established a hotel management firm under the name of Bodrum
Otel İşletmeleri Anonim Şirketi (aka Duja) in October 2019. The hotel is run by
the firm under the brand name of Be Premium Bodrum.
A quick accumulation of wealth and assets that Ekşioğlu
garnered from a vast array of business interests from defense to intelligence
indicate that he has a big brother watching over him in the Turkish government.
That brother is no other than the Turkish president himself, who cleared
hurdles for Ekşioğlu and helped him cut through the red tape in the bureaucracy
to obtain government favors and perks.
It was reported that Ekşioğlu himself helped bring Botir
Rakhimov, (aka Batyr Bukharsky, or Bahtiyar İkramoğlu in Turkish), an Uzbek
national and a mobster in a Russian mafia network, to Turkey and obtain Turkish
citizenship for him in a 10 million euro bribery scheme. Rakhimov, wanted in
Spain for money laundering on behalf of the Russian mafia, was using the resort
to launder money.
According to Uras’s daughter Yasemin Victoria Uras, the
Paramount resort was handed over Rakhimov under a con scheme that led to a
lawsuit in Turkey and debt collection procedures. Ekşioğlu raided the resort
with a tank, according to Victoria, on June 26, 2018, the day her father died
under suspicious circumstances. Rakhimov was still a shareholder of the resort,
although Ekşioğlu and later Korkmaz were still effectively managing it.
According to Victoria, Rakhimov is wanted by the FBI and listed in the INTERPOL
database as a man who is being sought.
Under the management of Ekşioğlu and Korkmaz, the resort
became a meeting venue for senior judges, businesspeople, journalists,
politicians and other influential figures who conspired to commit crimes in
Turkey. Some of the people who were revealed to have been guests with all
expenses paid and accommodations included İsmail Demir, the head of the Presidency
of the Defense Industry (SSB), a top government body that decides on the
procurement of military equipment and helps develop defense industry
infrastructure. Demir was sanctioned by the US State Department in April 2021
in response to Ankara’s refusal to abandon its Russian S-400 anti-aircraft
system.
Esat Toklu, the chief judge of the Ankara Regional
Administrative Appeals Court, journalists Cem Küçük, Veyis Ateş and Rasim Ozan
Kütahyalı, who were involved in racketeering, all stayed in this luxury hotel
with all expenses paid. Cihat Yaycı, a former admiral who helped President
Erdoğan purge most pro-NATO officers from the military, was also a guest at the
hotel.
Ekşioğlu has earned a reputation in Ankara circles that he
is the man to go to if you want to fix legal problems, obtain government
contracts or tenders and facilitate all sorts of business dealings in
government agencies. His website is full of pictures of him with top officials
including Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu; Urban and Environment Minister
Murat Kurum; İsmail Rüştü Cirit, the then-head of the top criminal appeals
court; and former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım.
Rumor has it that he is also close to Turkish intelligence
agency (MIT) chief Hakan Fidan, and the two even have some sort of family ties
as well. He was alleged to have been involved in arms trade in Syria and Libya,
developed spy software especially for monitoring social media for the Turkish
government. He claimed to have sold tracking and data analysis software to the
intelligence agency. Some say he brags
about his connections to promote himself in business and political circles.
“[O]ur job in the defense industry is to sell military
equipment to areas where there’s more chaos and war. For example, two years ago
I sold maybe 130 containers of supplies to Libya. Some 1,630 containers a year
may be small, but in a country where there is war, it’s a large amount of
military equipment,” he said in an interview with Klass magazine on June 30,
2017.
He underlined that his trade has been coordinated with the
Turkish government and is aimed at supporting the policies of President
Erdoğan. “Of course, we don’t trade with a country that has a a conflict of
interest with our government. In principle we don’t involve ourselves in such
deals. And when something goes wrong, we go and report it [to the Erdoğan
government],” he noted.
The luxury resort helped him secure connections not only
with government officials but also with celebrities whose pictures were used
for Ekşioğlu’s public relations campaign. He was seen with Steven Seagal and
Jean Claude Van Damme, while his buddy Rakhimov posed with Nicole Kidman, all
of whom stayed at the resort as guests of the owners.
Most of his business dealings are done via EKBA Holding
Anonim Şirketi, established in June 2015 with Ekşioğlu as chairman. He also
owns a number of firms, all relatively newly established companies under his
name or through partnership with others. They include construction firm Cek
Yapı İnşaat Mimarlik Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Şirketi, defense technologies firm
Ice Savunma Teknolojileri Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi, renewable energy
firm Hakan Yenilenebilir Enerji Yatirimlari Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi,
construction firm EKS İstanbul Yapı Taahhüt Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi,
military technology and research firm Harp Arge Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim
Şirketi and a defense contractor CEMD Savunma Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi
In an interview with Europenewsport , Ekşioğlu underlined
that he works with President Erdoğan whose wishes are very important for him.
He said his firms are involved in national defense projects such as
manufacturing drones, planes, tanks and ships.
Trade registry filing for Ekşioğlu’s construction firm EKS
İstanbul Yapı Taahhüt Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi, set up under his
brother’s name.
He is married to a Belarusian woman but allegedly had an
affair with a woman named Songül Bayram, whom he convinced to invest in his
construction firm EKS İstanbul Yapı Taahhüt Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi,
established under the name of his brother, Candan Baki Ekşioğlu, and four
others in August 2011. Bayram became chairman of the board in October 2013.
When the two had a falling out, Ekşioğlu allegedly
blackmailed Bayram with a threat to leak intimate photos and videos from their
affair. He had allegedly battered her, ran surveillance and wiretapped her
phone, effectively turning her life into hell. In the end Bayram had to turn
over her shares in CEMD and EKS Istanbul to Burak Başlılar, a caretaker and
trusted man of Ekşioğlu, in January 2015.
A luxury housing project in Bodrum, Selen Vadi Konakları, with a price
tag of 750,000 euros for each villa, was seized from Bayram.
Another notorious figure Ekşioğlu was in bed with is a man
named Levent Bektaş, former major who was convicted of membership in a
clandestine neo-nationalist gang in the past. Ekşioğlu turned over the defense
firm CEMD he established in February 2016 with his brother Canan to Bektaş, who
became general manager in March 2016. The evidence collected from Bektaş office
during the execution of a search and seizure warrant in April 2009 revealed
that Bektaş was involved in a secret plan to assassinate prominent non-Muslim
figures in Turkey. He was arrested in connection to a large cache of munitions
— 21 light anti-tank weapons (LAW), 14 grenades, 24 explosive fuses and 450
grams of C3 explosives — unearthed in İstanbul’s Poyrazköy district.
Although Bektaş was convicted and sentenced to prison, the
Erdoğan government intervened in his case and helped him get out of jail in
January 2014. Bektaş left the position at CEMD in April 2017 and according to
trade registry records, established own defense firm, CCSS Danişmanlik ve
Güvenlik Sistemleri Anonim Şirketi, in December 2019 with his partner Erdal
Çerçi.
Serdar Ekşioğlu, the husband of one of Erdoğan’s nieces and
claimed to be the brother of Cihan Ekşioğlu, was exposed by Turkish mobster
Peker as a facilitator in sending illegal arms and supplies to armed jihadist
groups in Syria. In a recorded FaceTime conversation with Serdar Ekşioğlu,
Peker got him to admit on the record that he was personally involved in sending
arms under the guise of humanitarian aid to Syria in cooperation with SADAT, a
private defense contractor run by the Turkish president’s former chief military
advisor.
The brother was also accused of funneling funds to Turkish
gangs in Germany in support of Erdoğan’s campaign of intimidation against
diaspora Turks and Kurds who were critical of him.
Despite serious allegations against him, Ekşioğlu has kept
his silence and never commented on the accusations about his shady business
activities.
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