Report Reveals Where Erdogan Hides his Secret Wealth
Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stashed some of his wealth in cash and gold
in multiple walk-in vaults he had custom made for the basement of a villa in
his family compound in Istanbul, two witnesses told Nordic Monitor.
One witness
saw the vaults after the were being newly installed in the basement of the
luxury villa while he was a guest at a private event held by Erdogan in 2011.
“I was being ushered to a place to perform an evening
prayer, and we went through a basement hall where I saw room-size vaults whose
doors were still covered in protective plastic sheeting,” he told the Monitor
on condition of anonymity for safety reasons during a phone interview.
He described
the steel doors of the safes as similar to bank vaults that can be opened by
turning a locked wheel from the outside. “I saw wheels on the doors that
resembled the steering wheel of a ship,” he said.
“I think
maids made a mistake when they were guiding me to a place where I could pray
and accidentally took me through the basement, because when the guards noticed,
I was immediately rushed out of there,” he added.
The witness
fled Turkey to escape a crackdown on government critics but still has family
members residing in Turkey.
The
first-hand account of the vaults built to hide Erdogan’s wealth was actually
corroborated with a 2013 voice recording during which he was heard instructing
his son in a panic to get rid of the cash in his house amid sweeping detentions
as part of investigations into corruption, reported the Monitor.
Another
witness who came forward to confirm the existence of the vaults, also speaking
anonymously, said the vaults were manufactured and delivered by multiple firms.
“The vaults were designed in such a way that a forklift
can be operated inside in and outside of it,” the second witness explained,
describing the basement as having access to the driveway on which cars or
trucks can be parked for loading and unloading cash transported on pallets.
The witness
noted that only a handful of guards, totally loyal to Erdogan, were allowed near
the villa where the safes were installed.
