A week of hearings on the "Imamoğlu criminal organization,” as prosecutors called it, will come to a close in a few days, but former Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu was already cornered, with statements from more eyewitnesses, plaintiffs and co-defendants speaking up at his trial for corruption.
Statements during the hearings at the massive courthouse-prison complex in Silivri on the outskirts of the city were damning, to say the least, and exposed an apparent cycle of bribery and fraud for doing business with the municipality.
Imamoğlu, presidential candidate first for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and then for its spin-off New Party (YP), was arrested last year and has been held in custody since then, along with 46 other defendants in the sprawling corruption case. A total of 436 defendants are being tried and most of them were released with judiciary control. Among them are municipal bureaucrats accused of being associates of Imamoğlu in his criminal ring thriving on bribes and tender-rigging. Prosecutors are seeking thousands of years in prison for Imamoğlu and fellow defendants. Gürgen, a code-named secret witness, was among those heard in this week’s hearings and detailed the alleged wrongdoings of the said ring. He testified against Ali Sukas, head of a municipal subsidiary in charge of landscaping. Gürgen claimed that Sukas’ wife was nominated for a legislative seat and he instructed his subordinate Ümit Polat to extort money from companies doing business with the subsidiary. "They were threatened that the subsidiary won’t release the funds they are owed to if they don’t pay for (campaign for Sukas’ wife),” the witness said.
Uğur Kemal Gökbulut, who worked as general coordinator for a construction company, detailed how the municipality asked for extra cash for construction permits for a major project of his company. He said the deputy mayor of Şişli, where the project would be constructed, asked him to hand out cheques to several people he designated "for charity.”
"They wouldn’t give us permits if we hadn’t delivered the cheques,” he told the court. Sefer Kocabaş, an architect who was an eyewitness in the hearing, told the court that municipal officials forced owners of a major shopping mall to pay bribes for a permit for a parking garage inside the mall and when they refused, the municipality issued fines to the mall for irrelevant causes.
Ilker Aydın, an investment manager at a pharmaceuticals company, told the court the company’s owner had invested in a construction project in Istanbul’s Şişli district, but the project was incomplete as the municipality had not issued permits for remaining apartment and commercial blocks when the company refused to pay the $5 million requested by the municipality. Aydın said the company later agreed to pay $3.5 million as a bribe for approval of the project.
Another witness, Metin Karakoç, said he worked for a company mentioned in the indictment and that Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) employee and mapping engineer Yakup Öner had requested a "donation” during a meeting with his boss, Mehmet Torun, who is both a defendant and a complainant in the case. Torun agreed to the request, he said. Claiming that the donation in question was subsequently converted into a conditional donation, Karakoç said they made the payment after their requests were approved by the municipal council.