Koç’s bank to pay $51 million in fines
ISTANBUL
Turkish lender Yapı Kredi, of the Koç Holding Turkish conglomerate, along with Italy’s UniCredit, said late Nov. 12 that it received an order from the Turkish tax authorities to pay penalties totalling 103.2 million Turkish Liras ($50.61 million).Yapı Kredi said the unpaid taxes and fines accumulated from banking and insurance tax that were due on loans in transactions between 2008 and 2010 from Yapı Kredi’s Bahrain branch.
Koç Holding companies have been under close watch for a while. The Police and the Finance Ministry’s tax inspectors raided the offices of the group’s Tüpraş, Turkey’s only refiner, and energy company Aygaz, in July.
Officials said it was a regular inspection, while Koç Holding C-levels did not make any comment. But then on Sept. 26 a government executive committee that oversees defense procurement scrapped a $2 billion deal with Koç’s shipyards, RMK Marine. Pledging new competition under the framework of the national warship program (MILGEM) with the move, the states envisages the construction of eight corvettes by way of the naval initiative.
Koç's profit surges in Q3
Koç Holding announced it posted a 76 percent rise in third quarter net profits for the year to 1.2 billion Turkish Liras ($588.52 million). The group’s consolidated net profit rose 31 percent to 2.24 billion liras in the nine months through September.“Despite challenging market conditions, we, as the members of the Koç Group, believe in the long-term growth potential of Turkey,” said the group CEO Turgay Durak, adding that specifically some recovery signals from European economy and some positive developments in Turkey’s exports made them more optimistic about the future. He noted that Turkey’s solid economic base, strong banking system and highly disciplined public finances enabled the country to face the negative effects of the global economic fluctuations in a very limited way.
