Leaked footage ahead of municipal elections stirred up controversy for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in March. Now, the people in the footage and their alleged accomplices face prison terms of up to one year for acquiring illegal donations for the party.
Security camera footage circulating on social media a few weeks before the elections showed several people linked to the main opposition party counting piles of cash in an office. The party claimed that the money seen in the video, allegedly taken a few years ago, was used to purchase an office building for CHP in Istanbul, and there was nothing illegitimate. Critics of the party have claimed that the money was used by the party to “buy” delegates for intraparty elections.
An indictment by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office in Istanbul, which was made public over the weekend, links the cash to “donations” for the building’s purchase but says the donations were not acquired legitimately. The indictment calls upon the court to hand down sentences to 22 suspects, including Canan Kaftancıoğlu, former Istanbul head of the CHP.
Other defendants in the case include former district mayors of Şişli and Maltepe of Istanbul, incumbent head of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) sports club Fatih Keleş, former deputy director of CHP’s Istanbul branch Özgür Nas and Tuncay Yılmaz, general manager of a construction company owned by the family of incumbent Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
The indictment says the wads of cash seen in the footage were related to the sale of a property to the CHP in 2019 in Istanbul by a local company. The indictment says cash counted by that company’s executive and others in the video taken in the office of a lawyer amounted to TL 15.5 million ($460,000). According to the indictment based on the local property registry directorate records, the CHP acquired ownership of the said property for TL 24.3 million through a deal signed by Kaftancıoğlu and a representative of the property’s owner. When investigators inquired about this, the CHP’s Istanbul branch confirmed that they had paid TL 39.8 million for the sale. It also confirmed acquiring cash for the sale through a donation campaign. Prosecutors say the money seen in the video was not registered in any bank account and it was unclear that the donation campaign organized by the CHP complied with laws regulating political party donations. It cites an article that requires parties and their donors to give and take official receipts for each instance of donation and parties are required to assign a campaign official for donations.
Pointing out discrepancies in the donation and acquisition process, prosecutors called for ownership of the property in question to be transferred to the Treasury, along with donations used in the acquisition.
The party blamed the lawyer whose office is seen in the footage for leaking it and insisted that he tried to blackmail the party, though the footage did not show any “criminal actions.”
Imamoğlu denied the allegations that money was used for any nefarious purpose and said the video surfaced as an attempt by his adversaries to “bring him down before the election.” “People trying to stir up a storm over this has an evil mindset,” he said. Imamoğlu won his second term in elections days after the footage emerged.
After the footage emerged, Mustafa Kemal Çiçek, a former lawyer for the CHP, slammed the party and claimed that the receipt document the party released in response to allegations was “forged.” Çiçek, quoted by Turkish media outlets, said the CHP paid over TL 30 million for the purchase of the building in 2019, and the majority of the money was sent by the CHP administration based in Ankara and the rest was covered by Treasury support for political parties. One month later. Çiçek underlined that the acquisition payment went through a bank and was not personally delivered as the video showed.
The footage emerged a few weeks after the parliamentary staff discovered a bag containing $250,000 left in the room of a CHP lawmaker. Two lawmakers associated with the find denied the allegations after some critics claimed the money was “left” as a bribe or would be used to “buy supporters” for the party.
