‘Federal Cyprus already exists at the mafia level’

A federal Cyprus already exists at the mafia level, former Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Ferdi Sabit Soyer said.

“A federation has been established in Cyprus. It has been established unofficially, and it has been carried out in the form of mafias. The mafias of the south and the mafias of the north, the gangs in Turkey and the gangs in Greece, have all formed a federation,” he told television channel Kanal Sim.

As such, he called on the Turkish Cypriot authorities to take a “clear position in the fight against black money”.

“We must be in a position to prevent the danger of our country being included in the list of countries which launder black money,” he added.

Soyer’s comments come off the back of a series of revelatory interviews published on news website Bugun Kibris earlier in the year of Cemil Onal, the former financial advisor of Turkish Cypriot businessman Halil Falyali.

Onal had alleged that Falyali was engaged in high-level money laundering and that he had links to drugs rings which involved some of the most powerful men in Turkey, including the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, and former prime minister Binali Yildirim.

In one of those interviews, Onal had made reference to a years-long association between Falyali and Greek Cypriot businessman Loukas Fanieros, alleging that Falyali “may have gained access to the European financial system through the south of Cyprus”.

“The south of Cyprus’ international banking channels and its membership of the European Union may have served as a back door for money laundering,” he said, adding that Fanieros’ father Antonis Fanieros “laundered illegal betting revenues through various businesses for years”.

He had also alleged that Fanieros and Falyali were both involved in a network stretching as far as Belarus and Curacao.

Falyali was shot dead near Kyrenia in 2022, and Onal was shot dead in Rijswijk, a suburb of The Hague, on May 1 this year, shortly after the interviews were published.

He had himself been arrested in the Netherlands in 2023 in connection with the Falyali assassination but successfully fought extradition to Turkey saying that his life would be in danger if sent back to the country.

In addition to the interviews, he had, according to Bugun Kibris, handed documents to American and Dutch intelligence, with large swathes of the interviews’ content referring to Falyali’s alleged dealings with the highest levels of Turkey’s government and its ruling AK Party.

At the centre of his allegations are a reported 45 or 46 cassette tapes which Falyali had kept and intended, if and when necessary, to use as blackmail against powerful figures.

According to Onal, Erdogan and Fidan, who was also allegedly involved in the illicit business, appointed the son of longtime Erdogan ally and former controller of his discretionary funds Maksut Serim as Turkey’s ambassador in the north with the aim of recovering the tapes.

Yasin Ekrem Serim was appointed as ambassador last summer and, according to Onal, told, “get those tapes and bring them back, that is how you will rise in the state”.

However, it has been reported that while Turkey’s National intelligence organisation (Mit) had discovered that there were a total of 45 or 46 such tapes, Serim only recovered 40, and kept the other five for himself.

Turkey’s presidential communications directorate slammed the allegations, describing them as “fictitious” and “unfounded”, while the country’s foreign ministry promised to take legal action over the matter, describing the allegations as “unfounded” and “not based on any concrete evidence”.