At least 13 people have been detained in recent hours in Turkey following an investigation launched by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in connection with a corruption probe linked to a series of concerts organised by the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality – governed by Turkish main opposition party, the CHP – between 2021 and 2024, in which invoices were allegedly inflated and then collected through shell companies.
As reported in a statement quoted by the daily Hürriyet, the Ankara prosecutor’s office said the suspects – who include both former officials of the capital’s municipality and businessmen involved in organising events – were arrested on charges of abuse of authority and rigging public tenders. The investigation opened by Ankara’s chief prosecutor focuses specifically on a total of 32 concerts held between 2021 and 2024 that would have resulted in a financial loss to the public purse of 154.4 million Turkish liras (about €3.15 million), according to several reports prepared by the Interior Ministry, the Financial Crimes Investigation Board and the Court of Accounts.
The Ankara Metropolitan Municipality (ABB, in Turkish) in turn issued a statement following the news of the detentions stating that the irregularity was reported on 11 November 2024 and that the municipality then immediately contacted the Municipal Inspection Board, which examined in detail what happened but nevertheless issued a report stating that no irregularities or public harm had been detected.
The statement adds that, under normal circumstances, the officials currently working at the municipality should have been called to the police station to give evidence, and insists that “the Court of Auditors previously audited all the operations of our culture department, and no incidences were found. In addition, the civil inspectors carried out a ten-year inspection between 2021 and 2022, and no problems or incidents were found in relation to the tendering procedure (of the concerts). In other words, no irregularities were found in the tenders of the Department of Culture (of the ABB)”.
Inflated prices and ghost companies
However, the reports included in the investigation file handled by the public prosecutor’s office, point to the contrary; for example, it is stated that the procurement of services for the concerts organised by the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality between 2021 and 2024 did not comply with the procedure, that the prices paid to the contracting companies for the organisation of a total of 32 concerts did not correspond to the usual prices and – in fact – were far above the standard prices prevailing on the market, and that the public administration suffered losses equivalent to 154,453,221.60 liras (3,160,885.18 euros).
These reports also state that the concerts organised by the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality and the Department of Culture and Social Affairs were awarded to a single company through ‘direct contracting’ of a service, when this should have been the subject of a public tender among several companies, and despite the fact that this was contrary to the current legislation on public tenders.
Furthermore, a report prepared by the Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) and mentioned by the prosecutor’s office in its investigation states that at least three of the awarded companies were not actually located at the specified addresses, operating as virtual offices that they used to issue irregular invoices; besides, at least two of these companies sent part of the money for the organisation of the concert that they had received from the municipality to newly created companies, all of them with a single partner structure, with operating addresses that were generally flats and different from the addresses they declared, with no insured employees, and with completely different areas of activity from those of the paying company – that is, completely unrelated to the organisation of events.
The MASAK report, on which the public prosecutor’s office also bases part of its corruption investigation, also states that the fees paid to the artists who performed at the concerts under investigation represented approximately only 20% of the amount paid by the Ankara municipality, while the remaining 80% remained in the hands of the aforementioned companies. The expert examination further found that although the stage set-up, payments for services at the concerts and the contractors’ profits were calculated separately for each concert, several of these concerts were held at the same venue and on the same dates, so that the actual costs were artificially inflated , with the result that the Financial Crimes Investigation Board determines that the actual losses to the public coffers probably exceed the value initially calculated.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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