Allegations of bribes continue to haunt municipalities run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). The latest investigation targeting corruption focused on the municipality of Ataşehir, an Asian side district of Istanbul, whose mayor was arrested last March on corruption charges.
On Saturday, 20 suspects, including Ataşehir Mayor Onursal Adıgüzel, were detained. A report by the Sabah newspaper says suspects, mostly municipal bureaucrats, accumulated bribes amounting to $7 million. Adıgüzel and others, including his deputy mayors, are accused of collecting bribes from businesspeople seeking to join the municipality’s tenders and those seeking construction and zoning permits.
Police raided 45 locations across Istanbul to detain the suspects in the wake of the investigation, which included reports by the Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK). The reports’ findings pointed out that bribery thrives in granting building permits in particular.
The Sabah report says some municipal bureaucrats collaborated with owners of private companies and the amount of the bribe was determined based on the scale of the projects for which owners sought permits from the municipality. Bribes were reportedly shared among the bureaucrats of the municipality. Adıgüzel and other suspects will be referred to a court and will either be released or remanded in custody then. Adıgüzel and some suspects refused to hand over passwords of their cellphones after their detention, the Sabah report says.
Excerpts in the report, derived from tapped phone conversations, highlight the existence of bribery in exchange for permits. In one conversation between employees of a private company, they claim that the municipality asked for an astronomical amount of money in exchange for a permit, but they later bargained to decrease it to "2 million dollars.” In another conversation between a contractor and a lawyer, the contractor said he was forced to pay $6.5 million to secure a permit for an apartment block and for the construction of a hospital. "I still feel a pain in my chest,” the contractor said as he complained to the lawyer.