Former Turkish leaders may face criminal charges on privatisation irregularities after a parliamentary committee completes an investigation into government corruption.

Former prime ministers, Bülent Ecevit and Mesut Yilmaz, and 18 other members of the previous government could face charges of malfeasance in office after the committee ended a probe on government corruption on July 9.

A vote in the Grand National Assembly later this year will determine whether Mr Ecevit and the others will be prosecuted.

The committee said there was sufficient evidence to suggest that Mr Ecevit (five times prime minister), Mr Yilmaz (three times prime minister and former coalition partner) and other former cabinet members were responsible for irregularities in the privatisations of state enterprises carried out by Mr Ecevit’s government from April 1999 to December 2002.

The committee said that interventions in the privatisation process by Mr Ecevit, Mr Yilmaz and other ministers led to “massive losses” for the Treasury.

It said that the ministers allowed the buyers of the state companies to postpone payments of their debts to the government for long periods of time and, in some cases, to skip interest payments.

The largest single privatisation under the Ecevit government was the block sale of Petrol Ofisi, the country’s biggest retailer of petroleum products and largest operator of service stations. It was sold to a joint venture involving Türkiye Is Bankasi, one of Turkey’s largest private banks, and Dogan Holding, a publishing, broadcasting, energy and financial services giant.

The development comes after banking authorities on July 3 banned Türkiye Imar Bankasi, a medium-sized bank owned by the Uzan family, from carrying out banking activities.

The ban followed a run on the bank’s deposits after the government seized control last month, accusing the family’s utilities businesses Çukurova Elektrik and Kepez Elektrik of multiple breaches of their obligations to the state.

The Uzan family owns Rumeli Holding, with interests in steel, banking, insurance, cement, broadcasting, publishing and telecommunications. A Rumeli spokesman described the seizures as the “foulest plot” against private investment in Turkey. He said the action was “politically motivated” and aimed to emasculate Cem Uzan, senior shareholder of the group and leader of the Young Party, which keeps doing well in public opinion polls ahead of municipal elections in spring 2004.

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