Former Turkish cop key in bikie drug syndicate
A former police officer accused of being the “corrupt inside guy’’ for Australian fugitives including Hakan Ayik arrested in Turkey, accused of helping foreign gangsters gain citizen and residency
A former Turkish police officer is among 41 people arrested after police smashed an offshore criminal syndicate being run by Australian drug fugitive Hakan Ayik.
The former officer, known only as MS, has been identified by Turkish media as being arrested in Operation Cage, the October raid on a criminal syndicate operating out of Istanbul and involving a large number of fugitive Australians including Ayik, Hakan Arif, Duax Ngakuru, Baris Tukel, Erkan Dogan, Hasan Topal and Jimmy Awaijan.
Many of them were connected to the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang.
There has been soul-searching in Turkey since the dramatic arrests about how known fugitives, many of them the subject of Interpol arrest notifications, were able to gain Turkish citizenship, residency or social security rights, buy houses and register guns.
The Australian has been told MS has been accused of being the “corrupt inside guy’’ for the “Comanchero’’ in Turkey.
Several sources say the fugitives were able to live in Istanbul with impunity and flaunt their wealth because they were protected by high-level officials.
The existence of MS was first revealed by Turkish investigative journalist Ismail Saymaz in Sozcu, a national daily newspaper. According to the report, Ngakuru, Arif, Tukel and Dogan were all accused of being leaders of the syndicate, and the subject of Interpol red notices, which asks for them to be arrested in any jurisdiction that works with Interpol.
Another man wanted in Australia for alleged drug-smuggling, Nejmi Saki, was also arrested.
The syndicate is accused of smuggling drugs from South America to Australia, The Netherlands and Hong Kong via South Korea and South Africa.
Arif’s wife Sibel, Avaijan and Topal – who changed his name to Alp Ozturk – were the subject of blue notices, which asks for Interpol to be notified if they cross international borders.
According to reports in Sozcu, MS worked at the Bakirkoy Police District in Istanbul before leaving and taking over a company named Visal Consulting, which processes residency permits, real estate and citizenship application for foreigners.
MS reportedly organised residency and citizenship for several Australian fugitives.
He is alleged to have met Ayik in 2017, and applied for citizenship for Ayik’s Dutch-born wife, Fabienne Fleur (Fleur Messelink), who runs a plastic surgery clinic in Istanbul.
She reportedly had her citizenship application rejected but was granted a residency permit.
“The relationship between Ayik and MS advanced so much that it almost reached the level of partnership. MS’s lawyer, MT, became Ayık’s legal adviser,’’ the Sozcu report says.
Several fugitives including Ayik had renounced Australian citizenship in a bid to avoid extradition and are now facing domestic charges in Turkey relating to drug-smuggling and money-laundering. It is not known if they will be extradited to Australia.
Another alleged fugitive, Mark Buddle, was deported from Turkish Cyprus to mainland Turkey then to Australia last year.
Turkey also sent back accused terrorist Neil Prakash.
Sozcu quotes what it says is MS’s statement to police, in which he admits to meeting Ngakuru through Ayik in 2017. Ngakuru was trying to get a Turkish residency permit.
Ngakuru, named “supreme leader’’ of the Comancheros in 2022, reportedly worked as a “marketing officer’’ for MS’s Visal Consulting between July 2020 and December 2022.
A New Zealand citizen with strong ties to Australia, he was arrested in January 2023 but has not been extradited and is in custody. He is subject to an Interpol red notice issued on behalf of New Zealand. The arrest notice was issued in 2021, a year after he started work with Visal Consulting.
Another associate of Ayik, Serbian-born Swedish citizen Maximilian Rivkin, was also arrested in Operation Cage.
Rivkin and Ayik are accused in the US of promoting encrypted app AN0M, which was later discovered to be a police sting run by the Australian Federal Police and the FBI
More Coverage
‘She’s not on trial for being a liar’, Patterson’s defence counsel says
Colin Mandy SC says the way Erin Patterson acted in the days after hosting a deadly lunch ‘doesn’t change what her intention was at the time of serving the meal’.
High Court dismisses CFMEU challenge
The court rejected a legal challenge to the federal government’s takeover of the CFMEU’s construction division, in a win for Labor and a defeat for the union’s sacked officials.