A Turkish drug trafficker indicted in the US collaborated with an Iranian fraudster to launder money for Iran, using the breakaway state of Turkish Cyprus as a base while paying tens of millions of US dollars in hush money to Turkey’s interior minister for protection from investigation.
The bombshell revelations came from Cemil Önal, a bookkeeper who worked for slain drug trafficker Halil Falyalı who, along with his family, had amassed tens of billions of dollars from various illegal activities, including gambling, casinos and the drug trade in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), a self-declared independent enclave recognized only by Turkey.
According to an audio recording made by Önal in the fall of 2023 from his prison cell in the Netherlands and shared by Germany-based Turkish journalist Cevheri Güven on YouTube, Falyalı paid $20 million to then-Turkish interior minister Süleyman Soylu for protection from criminal investigations.
Soylu, once designated under sanctions by the US Treasury, aided Falyalı and his associates in avoiding crackdowns in both Turkey and the KKTC, which is effectively controlled by the Turkish government.
The bribe, facilitated by Hüsnü Falyalı, a brother of Halil, was transferred to Ahmed Nazari Shirehjini, an Iranian accused of orchestrating a large-scale fake investment scam aimed at European citizens. It was subsequently routed to Sadık Soylu, the brother of the Turkish interior minister, who served as the intermediary between crime syndicates and the minister.
According to the bookkeeper, the payment was made on March 7, 2020. It appears that the Falyalı family received its full share since their name had never surfaced during investigations by the cybercrime police unit into illegal online betting schemes in Turkey.
Despite some suspects admitting during interrogation that they were involved in illegal betting schemes linked to the Falyalı family, members of the Falyalı family were deliberately omitted from official statements under orders from Interior Minister Soylu. Instead, lower-profile individuals were made scapegoats in numerous police investigations.
Hüsnü Falyalı, who previously collaborated with his late brother Halil, now oversees the multi-billion dollar organized crime network along with Halil’s widow, Özge Falyalı.
In recent years, the Falyalı family has relocated a portion of their wealth to the United Arab Emirates, where Nazari’s Iranian associates, engaged in the currency exchange business, facilitated the transfer. Given the US sanctions on the Iranian financial and banking systems, Nazari brought cash from Iranian clients, and the funds were laundered through payment systems like MaksiPay. This system, run by the Falyalı crime syndicate, is commonly used for transferring funds for online betting.
According to the bookkeeper, Falyalı facilitated the circumvention of sanctions on Iran by channeling funds through the online betting system, leveraging the Turkish financial and banking infrastructure in both Turkey and the KKTC. While Nazari profited from currency exchange, the Falyalı family generated revenue from online betting platforms.
The family employs numerous IT technicians and programmers to ensure the seamless operation of their online betting sites. These programmers have even developed an app for both iOS and Android mobile phones, distributing them for a period of time on the App Store and Google Play. According to the accountant, they were generating as much as 8 million Turkish lira a month from Google alone.
Nazari also invested money generated by Iranian oil smugglers in Falyalı’s business schemes, utilizing Dubai as a transfer hub.
In the Falyalı crime network, Hüsnü was depicted as a conduit between the organized crime syndicate and government officials in Turkey and northern Cyprus. He is responsible for disbursing cash to these officials for a protection from criminal probes and the smooth operation of the criminal enterprise.
When necessary, the family also resorts to blackmailing government officials using tapes secretly recorded in casino hotels where gambling and prostitution take place. The Falyalı family has maintained an untouchable status in northern Cyprus, where they even exercise control over their own marine and port facilities, which have been utilized for drug smuggling and other illegal activities.
The Falyalı family established a business partnership with Nazari when the Iranian scammer fled from Germany to settle in Turkey, intending to operate a fake investment scheme. Through this scheme, Nazari defrauded numerous elderly individuals in Europe with false promises of higher returns. Despite being a wanted man in Europe and facing criminal investigations, Nazari succeeded in obtaining Turkish citizenship by bribing Turkish government officials.
Through his connections with the government, Nazari not only acquired access to private information about wealthy expatriates in Europe who were targets of his investment scheme but also obtained permission to have a special entourage of escort cars, allowing him to bypass traffic checkpoints.
The family has also drawn the attention of US authorities. Halil and Hüsnü, along with a third Turk named Özgur Demir, the family’s representative in the UK, were indicted and faced a US arrest warrant on July 13, 2015. The federal complaint accused them of a criminal conspiracy to transport heroin from Cyprus and Turkey to the UK and launder the proceeds from those drug sales, as well as from drug sales in other countries, including the US.
According to motions filed with the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the US Justice Department’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) stated that it had acquired credible information and evidence linking the Falyalı brothers to organized crime and involvement in large-scale drug and weapons trafficking. The Falyalı family purchased a custom-made boat from the US, which they used to traffic drugs from Turkey’s port of Mersin to Famagusta in Cyprus.
In May 2012 Halil met with a confidential source from the DEA to launder drug money purportedly generated from a cocaine sale in the US. The arrangement stipulated that Halil would receive a 10 percent commission on $50,000, which was handed over to his representative in London by the DEA source. Halil utilized a family bank account in the KKTC to launder the money and transferred the agreed-upon amount to a DEA undercover account in a bank in Amman, Jordan.
A similar money laundering scheme was later executed by Halil, this time involving $100,000 wired by the DEA through a front company established in Virginia. The Falyalı family received a 7 percent commission, along with a one-time payment of 10,000 euros as a bribe to the bank manager in the KKTC. The money was then deposited into an account at Is Bank in the KKTC under the guise of a fictitious oil trade transaction. After deducting commissions and bribe money, Halil transferred $79,400 to the DEA’s undercover bank account in Sofia, Bulgaria. A third transaction, totaling $150,000, was completed in September 2012 using similar methods.
The trial in absentia concluded in 2016, with the Falyalı brothers being found guilty.
Halil was killed in an attack that occurred in front of his house in Kyrenia in February 2022. Organized crime figures Mustafa Söylemez and Mehmet Faysal Söylemez were indicted for his murder. Following a trial in Turkey in January 2024, Mustafa was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, while Mehmet was acquitted due to insufficient evidence.
Abdurrahim Çelik, Cengiz Şener and Ender Yıldız, other defendants in the case, were sentenced to 25 years each for “assisting in premeditated murder” and “membership in a criminal organization.”
During a trial hearing, Mehmet claimed that former Ankara police chief Servet Yılmaz, a right-hand man for then-interior minister Soylu, served as a courier and delivered millions of dollars from Hüsnü to the Turkish minister. This testimony aligns with the bookkeeper’s claim in the audio recording.
Turkish authorities had never taken significant action against the Falyalı criminal enterprise until his death. The sole criminal case against him was initiated in 2007, ending in an acquittal in 2015. It was only after his death, believed to have been orchestrated by powerful figures connected to the highest echelons of the Turkish government as part of a reorganization within the organized crime syndicate in the KKTC, that Turkish authorities began to take action against the Falyalı family.
In November 2022, around $30 million in cryptocurrency belonging to Falyalı was seized on the Malta cryptocurrency exchange, following a demand from Turkish authorities as part of an investigation into an illegal gambling ring. Subsequently, in December 2022, Turkish prosecutors issued detention warrants for 163 individuals with ties to the Falyalı family, alleging their involvement in illegal gambling activities.
In another recorded audio, the bookkeeper Önal claimed that Özge Falyalı paid $50 million to then-vice president Fuat Oktay to prevent the escalation of the probe into the Falyalı syndicate following her husband’s murder. She feared that asset freezes and extradition demands could jeopardize her and her associates’ involvement in the business. According to Önal, a portion of the $50 million bribe was handed over to Oktay in Istanbul, while the majority was transferred to him in Dubai.
Since the alleged bribe was paid, operations against the Falyalı family seem to have been halted. No extradition request has been made for Özge Falyalı, and the family’s assets in Turkey remain untouched.
Oktay left the vice presidential office last year and is currently serving as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Turkish Parliament.
The Falyalı family, originally from the coastal city of Paphos in southwest Cyprus, relocated to the village of Kumyali in Famagusta after the Turkish military operation on the island in 1974. They were associated with paramilitary group the Turkish Cypriot Resistance Organization (TMT), which was formed by Rauf Denktaş, the founding president of the KKTC.
The family initially engaged in the sale of home appliances in northern Cyprus. Father Cahit Falyalı also pursued a career in politics, serving as deputy secretary general of the National Unity Party (Ulusal Birlik Partisi, UBP), a national-conservative political party in the KKTC.
Halil began his entrepreneurial journey by managing the Semah casino hotel in 1998 on the island. Over time, he expanded his business by acquiring more casinos. At the time of his death, he was managing Les Ambassadeurs Hotel & Casino in Cyprus. Starting in 2004, the family ventured into the illegal gambling business in Turkey, where the market is estimated to be around 100 billion Turkish lira as of today. Similar to his father, Halil’s sons were closely involved in politics and primarily funded the UBP.
His death was allegedly sanctioned by Mehmet Kemal Ağar, a notorious nationalist politician and former minister who has been at the top of the hierarchy in drug trafficking and organized crime activities in Turkey.
Ağar works closely with Turkish President Erdogan. Along with aiming to reorganize the crime network with a new division of shared responsibilities, Ağar and his mafia associates sought to eliminate Halil, whose name had garnered negative coverage, becoming a liability for the Erdogan government due to frequent mentions in the media. Instead, they aimed to install a new trustee who would serve as a silent partner.
Falyalı came to public attention in Turkey in May 2021, when notorious Turkish mob boss Sedat Peker 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, with profits laundered in the KKTC by Falyalı.
According to Peker, Erkam Yıldırım, the son of ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) politician and former prime minister Binali Yıldırım, Ağar and Falyalı were operating the cocaine operation, while then-interior minister Soylu provided them with immunity. The revenue was allegedly laundered through Falyalı’s casinos in the KKTC and online betting sites before being injected into Turkey’s economy.
