Efforts to uncover embezzlement of Erdoğan’s son.
According to Reuters, anti-corruption authorities in the United States and Sweden are investigating a complaint that names Erdogan’s son. According to the text of this complaint, the Swedish company affiliated with an American company has pledged to pay tens of millions of dollars as a bribe to one of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s sons in order to secure a dominant position in the Turkish market.
According to the report, no bribes were ultimately paid, and the Swedish company Dignitas Systems AB suddenly abandoned its telecommunications projects in Turkey late last year, according to a complaint filed by an individual with American authorities.
According to the complaint, the company’s plan was to get Erdogan’s government to pass regulations that would increase sales of Dignity’s product.
The complaint states that in exchange for 10 years of commercial exclusivity, Dignity agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars in lobbying fees through a company of which Bilal Erdoğan is a board member.
Although the move was dropped in September, it paints a clear picture of how Bilal Erdoğan is backing an investment firm.
Anders Eriksson, chief executive of Dignity, told Reuters he could not comment on the alleged plan.
Bilal Erdoğan said through a lawyer that allegations that he colluded with Dignity were “absolutely false”. This lawyer added: “This is a lie.” However, a senior official at Turkey’s Presidential Communications Department declined to comment on the report.
Reuters has not been able to independently confirm whether President Erdoğan and his son Bilal were aware of Dignity’s alleged bribery scheme.
After receiving the complaint in April, two months ago, the U.S. Department of Justice and Swedish prosecutors assigned a special agent and a detective inspector, respectively, to conduct a preliminary investigation and determine whether U.S. anti-bribery laws and Sweden has been violated or not. Anti-corruption experts in the United States and Sweden said that in both countries, committing to pay commissions may be a crime under certain circumstances.
Spokesmen for the Ministry of Justice and the Swedish Prosecutor’s Office said they had no comment on the matter.
Bilal Erdogan rarely appears in public. Along with other members of the Erdogan family, the 42-year-old businessman owns shares in BMZ Group, a shipping and construction company.
His name has been associated with corruption in the past. In 2016, Italian prosecutors launched a money-laundering investigation into Bilal Erdoğan, suspected of smuggling cash into the country. He denied the charge, and Italian prosecutors eventually dropped the investigation, citing a lack of evidence. Last year, the Russian government claimed it had evidence that President Erdogan’s son was profiting from cross-border oil trade with ISIS in Syria. Russia refused to share its evidence. Bilal Erdogan denied the accusations and said that the extremist rebels are enemies of Turkey.
In 2017, Dignity Company entered Turkey with the ambition of selling its traffic safety devices. That year, Dignity CEO Ericsson took the helm of the Turkish company launched by Smart Start. For several years, Dignity and Smart Start did not make much progress because they could not even indirectly reach President Erdogan, a person familiar with the matter said, and then tried to reach Erdogan and his entourage to help the monopoly. They increased the market.
