By Oluwakemi Kindness
Turkish prosecutors have moved to freeze the assets of former minister and senior ruling party official Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya and her husband, Ilyas Kaya, amid an investigation into an investment fund scandal.
In a statement on Tuesday, prosecutors said they had sent a letter to relevant institutions seeking the freezing of all assets belonging to the couple.
The move follows allegations by Turkey’s main opposition Yeni Parti that Kaya and her husband profited from the crisis involving investment funds.
Kaya, a former family minister and deputy head of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, resigned on Saturday.
She said her resignation was to take “political responsibility” and allow any investigation to proceed independently and impartially.
Yeni Parti alleged that the couple invested 63 million lira ($1.3 million) in April and sold their shares in September for about 1.3 billion lira ($26.5 million).
Party official Gokhan Gunaydın alleged that Kaya had access to insider information and said the party would disclose more names linked to the scandal.
Kaya has not admitted wrongdoing.
The scandal erupted in mid-September after several investment funds reportedly failed to meet investors’ redemption demands, triggering a sharp fall on Istanbul’s main stock exchange.
Regulators subsequently placed seven companies holding 131 investment funds into liquidation.
The funds reportedly held assets worth about $17 billion, while Turkey’s Capital Markets Board said more than 455,000 individual investors were affected.
On Tuesday, Erdogan held a three-hour meeting with economic aides over the crisis.
Earlier, he defended the ruling AK Party against the allegations, saying opponents could not tarnish the party’s record.
