Erdogan covers up for close friend Gunal in Ghosn’s escape

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has covered up for
his close friend Mehmet Nazif Gunal, head of the MNG Holdings, in the scandal surrounding
the escape of Lebanese-Brazilian businessman Carlos Ghosn from Japan to Lebanon
via Istanbul.
The Bakirkoy Court in Istanbul was satisfied with accepting
the indictment that was presented by the public prosecutor last week, in which it
demanded imprisonment for various periods, not exceeding eight years, for each
of the four pilots and an airline official on charges of illegally smuggling
Ghosn, imprisoning a one-year sentence for each of the hosts for not reporting Ghosn’s
flight from Osaka to Beirut on December 30, 2019.
The indictment states that Ghosn is believed to have been
smuggled in a musical instrument box large enough to carry a person measuring
1.7 meters long.
The Turkish regime did not disclose how two MNG planes were
operated without the approval of the company’s senior managers and carried out
at a very safe airport, merely presenting the aforementioned defendants as
scapegoats for the real perpetrators, as the general manager of the airline was
not charged. The airline’s mother company, affiliated with Gunal, who is close
to the Turkish president, was also spared investigation.
It is interesting that the Ghosn escape plane then
transported gold to Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, a close Erdogan ally.
On January 3, Bloomberg News reported that two planes operated
by MNG Holding were suspected of smuggling Ghosn and also helped in the gold
trade between the heavily banned Venezuelan government and Istanbul.
"The charges against the pilots and other employees are
an attempt to cover up in a state of panic," said Faruk Bayındır, the
former owner of the private Tarkim Airlines.
He added that it is impossible for the owners and operators
of aircraft to not know such an international plan to bring a businessman
fleeing to Turkey from Japan and transfer him to Lebanon.
Bayındır said that he spent years in the field of aviation
in Turkey and that no person could perform such an operation without an order
from influential people within the Turkish government.
It is worth noting that Erdogan’s friend Gunal, founder of
MNG Holding, has close links to Lebanon and the Hariri family. In 2007, Meed
Bank, owned by the Hariri family and the Arab Bank, bought 91% of MNG Holding
shares, and Gunal held 9% of the shares, which were renamed Turkland Bank
(T-Bank), receiving $160 million in sales.
Gunal's name also appeared during a banking crisis in the
1990s that led to the collapse of the center-right government at the time, as
he was close to then-Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz and mafia leaders at the time,
led by Alaattin Çakıcı. In a monitored conversation with Turkish businessman
Korkmaz Yiğit, who invested in several industries, including banking and the
media, they were talking about well-known mafia leader Alaattin Çakıcı, who
described Gunal as a close friend.
Ghosn was arrested for alleged financial violations in Tokyo
in 2018, and he was released on bail while the case was pending in Japan late
last year.
He then flew to Istanbul and was then transferred to another
plane bound for Beirut, where he arrived on December 30. In turn, Turkish
airline MNG Jet reported in January that two of its planes were used illegally
to smuggle Ghosn, who was first transported from Osaka, Japan to Istanbul, then
to Beirut.
The company said that its employee admitted to forging
flight records so that Ghosn's name did not appear.
The indictment also stated that Ghosn had been smuggled
inside an instrument case large enough to carry a person who is 1.7 meters
long.