On 1 January, Nordic Monitor published a report by Abdullah Bozkurt titled ‘Libya-linked POS money-laundering case in Turkey leaves key actors untouched’. According to the report, Turkish opposition party figure Özgür Karabat has accused prosecutors and financial regulators of deliberately narrowing an investigation that he says exposes one of the largest organized money-laundering operations in Turkey’s modern history. At the centre of these operations is Libya, with hundreds of point-of-sale (POS) terminals reportedly supplied by Turkish banks and physically shipped to Libya, while boxes of Libyan bank and credit cards were transported to Turkey. ‘On paper the terminals recorded sales of gold or goods to Libyan customers. In reality, no merchandise changed hands,’ the report claims.
Read the full report here.