Following the preparation of indictments against 28 suspects, including Dilan and Engin Polat, the court decided to continue the detention of the five defendants who are being held under a memorandum of action. Therefore, five detainees, including Dilan Polat and Engin Polat, appealed to the Istanbul Anatolian High Criminal Court. The court made a decision to dismiss the appeals against the four defendants, but Dilan Polat, whose documents were lost, was reevaluated today and the court dismissed her appeal.
Details of the MASAK report revealed
Within the scope of the investigation, the latest 908-page report prepared on the suspects, including the Porat couple, whose digital materials and notebooks were seized in internal searches, states that Dylan Porat purchased three properties between 2020 and 2023. It was reported that 5.4 million lira was deposited in her account, but there was nothing suspicious in the account.
The report noted that Dilan Porat had no decision-making authority in commercial and financial transactions, and that the decision-makers were Engin and Sezgin Porat.
The report states that Engin Porat’s account saw an inflow of 71,904,000 liras and an outflow of 144,208,000 liras between 2020 and 2023, during which he purchased three cars and six properties. No illegal gambling was detected.
It is stated that having regard to the general commercial capacity of the family company, transactions in respect of its assets will be proportionate to the income derived.
The report stated that Engin Porat committed the crime of smuggling (double bookkeeping) during the accounting period by recording records in other recording environments in addition to legal books in a manner that reduced the tax base, and also highlighted that no illegal gambling or money laundering was detected.
The indictment included the following assessment of prosecutors, emphasizing that waiting for illegally raised funds to be transferred in a clear and easily detectable manner to the accounts of individuals or companies under investigation is not the correct approach:
“In order to conceal the ultimate purpose of the individuals and companies investigated through professional tactics and organization, they established dozens of companies in the beauty and cosmetics sector and conducted real commercial activities, the scale of which reached considerable figures. They created fake invoices and made inter-company transfers to withdraw cash,” it is said. It is believed that they took advantage of these actions to mix funds obtained from real commercial activities with illegally flowing funds in an attempt to make them uncontrollable. In fact, it has been concluded that some of the large amounts of funds were stored in virtual currency wallets and transferred or entrusted to related parties to prevent the actual situation from being revealed. Since they were used for a luxurious lifestyle, they were laundered.
what happened?
In operations carried out since Nov. 1, 2023 in six provinces centered around Istanbul, 24 suspects, including Dilan Polat and her husband Engin Polat, have been arrested.
Within the scope of the investigation, a preliminary investigation report was prepared by the Financial Crimes Investigation Committee (MASAK) on the suspects, including the Polat couple, whose digital materials and books were seized during searches of their companies, which states: It was discovered that 200 million lira had been funneled from three companies undergoing liquidation to their relatives’ companies by issuing fake invoices in return for so-called transactions.
The funds were found to have been transferred between companies belonging to the family, and in the final stage were collected by a company called Milda Geylimekul, owned by Engin Polat, which purchased real estate and a number of vehicles. The Istanbul Financial Crimes Directorate identified the suspects and Ordu, based in Istanbul, Ankara and Yalova, carried out simultaneous operations at 43 addresses in Kirklareli and Manisa.
Continuing their investigation, the team discovered that a medical company owned by Dilan and Engin Polat had granted naming rights to another company in Ankara, and that 1.8 million liras in this company’s account were being transferred to the partner’s personal account.
Sixteen of the suspects, including Dylan Porat, Engin Porat and Sheila Do, were arrested and a judge ordered receivers appointed for 27 companies.
At the monthly detention review on June 14, a criminal justice of the peace heard Dilan Polat’s brother Can Sinem Shira Du, along with Can Polat, Gökay Bekar, Halit Polat, Harun Abak, Metin Yılmaz, Mustafa Özalp, Nilgün Yılmaz, Ülcan Ayyıldız, and Zekay Tepe. Applying the judicial management provisions, the court released him and ruled that the other five suspects would remain in custody.
From the indictment:
The indictment prepared by the Anatolian Chief Prosecutor’s Office after the investigation was completed stated that the illegally obtained funds were transferred and laundered without being put into the system using the “cold wallet method,” and that the organization was engaged in similar activities. Due to the fame and notoriety it has gained in a short time, real commercial activities are also being carried out among these activities, which is evaluated as an attempt to strengthen monitoring and crackdown on the most obvious aspect of money laundering crimes. Difficult.
The indictment states that evidence established an attempt to conceal funds derived from illegal gambling, and that multiple companies were created to create the impression that the wealth came from real transactions. In the course of these enterprises, false invoices were created and used for non-existent businesses and transactions, and secret external records were kept outside the books required to be kept by law.
The indictment also calls for the seizure and transfer of title to the 31 investigated companies and all real estate, vehicles, and similar assets owned by those companies to the public.
Dylan and Engin Porat were each sentenced to a total of 20 to 40 years in prison for “establishing and operating an organization with the intent to commit a crime,” “laundering property value resulting from a crime,” and “violating the law.” The indictment calls for them to serve prison terms of up to one year, but the other suspects are expected to receive various sentences. They will be incarcerated for a variety of offenses.
The indictment was sent back by the Anatolian Criminal Court of First Instance with the approval of the Chief Prosecutor, and it was stated that the High Criminal Court has the jurisdiction to hear the case.
The Istanbul Anatolian Chief Prosecutor’s appeal was accepted by the Anatolian Second Prosecutor’s Office, which stressed that “the competent court can decide according to the basic sentence and the increased sentence clause is not a basis for determining the duties of the court.”
The court has decided to hold the first hearing in the case on September 4. The hearing is scheduled to continue on September 5 and 6.
