Court orders CHP leader to pay Erdoğan compensation over ‘offshore’ claims 

ANKARA

A Turkish court has ordered main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to pay a compensation of 359,000 Turkish Liras to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his family over allegations that the latter had transferred money into offshore accounts in the tax haven of Isle of Man. 

Previously on July 18, 2018, the Anatolia 20th Court of First Instance ruled for compensation but was overturned by the Court of Appeals. The new ruling came after the case reappeared in court again.

The complaint filed by Erdoğan was amid a row over offshore accounts that Kılıçdaroğlu alleged the president and his relatives hold in the Isle of Man, a self-governing British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland.

In his parliament addressing in 2017, Kılıçdaroğlu said that the president’s close circle engaged in a multi-million-dollar traffic through an offshore company in Isle of Man, later providing receipts of the transfers too.

Erdoğan, however, accused Kılıçdaroğlu of “lying,” saying the five people named “received money because they had sold their existing companies.” “Money was not sent there,” the president had said.