Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for 163 people with links to a murdered Turkish Cypriot casino boss for allegedly engaging in illegal gambling, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday.
According to a statement released by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, the warrants were issued for 163 people in 30 provinces as part of an ongoing investigation in which authorities had issued detention warrants for 46 other suspects on Oct. 20.
They had also blocked the cryptocurrency accounts of 229 others as well as 11 companies that were involved in the transfer of money obtained from illegal gambling and sending it to cryptocurrency accounts owned by an Ankara-based criminal organization.
Among the 46 people detained, three were arrested while the rest were released under judicial supervision.
The authorities discovered that some of the money collected from illegal gambling in Turkey was sent to the cryptocurrency accounts of Halil Falyalı and his wife in the Malta cryptocurrency exchange.
Falyalı, who owned several casinos and hotels in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), a self-proclaimed state on the Turkish side of Cyprus, died in an attack that took place in front of his house in Kyrenia back in February.
Figures close to Falyalı are among the 163 suspects for whom detention warrants were issued, Turkish Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu said in a press statement on Tuesday, adding that their money and assets worth TL 808 million ($43.3 million) was seized by the Turkish authorities, while 101 of them had been detained so far as part of the investigation.
Falyalı came to public attention in Turkey in May 2021, when notorious Turkish mob boss Sedat Peker had alleged while exposing the Turkish government’s involvement in international cocaine trafficking that the drug was being shipped to Turkey from Venezuela and then to the Middle East on luxury yachts, while the profits were laundered in the KKTC by Falyalı.
Falyalı, who was alleged to have had shady relations with Turkish government figures, owned several casinos and hotels in the KKTC including Les Ambassadeurs Hotel & Casino, one of the island’s most luxurious.
According to Peker, Erkan Yıldırım, the son of senior ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) politician Binali Yıldırım, former minister Mehmet Ağar and Falyalı were running the cocaine operation, while Soylu afforded them immunity. The revenue was laundered through Falyalı’s casinos in the KKTC and on online betting sites before being injected into Turkey’s economy.
Peker had also said Falyalı was influential in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government and that he possessed sex tapes of a number of politicians and bureaucrats whom he hosted at his luxury hotels in Cyprus.