Pro-government television commentator Rasim Ozan Kütahyalı, a longtime supporter and close confidant of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been arrested as part of a sweeping illegal betting investigation based in the southern province of Adana, the DHA news agency reported on Monday.
Kütahyalı was among 154 suspects referred to court after being detained in raids carried out across 21 provinces on May 14. The investigation targets alleged illegal betting, fraud, bribery and money laundering.
The Adana Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office had issued detention warrants for 198 suspects, including three bank executives, eight police officers, four lawyers and Kütahyalı. Police detained 161 suspects in raids on 228 locations, while efforts are continuing to locate the remaining suspects.
According to prosecutors, the investigation was launched by the Terrorism Financing and Money Laundering Crimes Bureau and is based on reports by Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK), technical and physical surveillance, bank records, digital material, cryptocurrency analyses, phone traffic records and other evidence.
Prosecutors allege that the suspects acted as an organized criminal network and laundered proceeds from illegal betting and phishing-related fraud through electronic payment companies, bank accounts, virtual POS systems, foreign exchange offices, jewelers, shell companies and cryptocurrency platforms.
The prosecutor’s office said the network allegedly set up special software infrastructure and panel systems, provided financial infrastructure to illegal betting websites, organized money transfers through electronic payment companies and virtual POS networks and used cryptocurrency systems, jewelers and exchange offices to layer and convert criminal proceeds.
Financial reviews conducted as part of the investigation allegedly uncovered suspicious funds transfers and money laundering activity in the amount of some TL 100 billion ($2 billion), with prosecutors describing the network as a professional financial crime organization operating on both the national and international levels.
Prosecutors also detailed alleged financial traffic involving Kütahyalı. According to the case file, his bank account was not merely a passive recipient account, with prosecutors saying around TL 37.7 million ($800,000) was transferred from his account to other accounts suspected of being used for layering.
They also said around TL 15.7 million ($350,000) was transferred into his account from accounts within the same alleged structure.
An analysis of electronic money and payment institutions allegedly found that TL 35.2 million ($750,000) entered Kütahyalı’s accounts from six different entities between 2022 and 2024. Prosecutors said the transactions were not considered ordinary individual financial activity when assessed together with the alleged network’s overall operating system.
Kütahyalı denied any wrongdoing after being taken into custody in İstanbul and transferred to Adana.
“I don’t have that kind of money traffic. There has been a misunderstanding. We will find out,” he told reporters after his detention.
He also reportedly told police that the funds transfers were related to personal debts owed to him and denied any connection to the alleged crimes.
“The money in question was sent in return for receivables. It was sent as repayment of debt. I have nothing to do with the alleged crimes,” he was quoted as saying.
Kütahyalı’s detention attracted particular attention because one day before the operation he had shared a social media post about a separate illegal betting investigation and wrote, “All illegal betting gangs will be finished.”
Turkish authorities have stepped up financial crime investigations in recent years, particularly after the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global anti-money laundering watchdog, put Turkey on its “grey list” in 2021 over weaknesses in combating money laundering and terrorist financing.
Turkey was removed from the list in June 2024 after the FATF said Ankara had made “significant progress” in improving its anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing framework.
Kütahyalı, a longtime pro-government commentator, has recently faced legal trouble over remarks on domestic politics. Prosecutors sought a prison sentence of up to three years for him last year over claims that the government would soon take control of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). He was briefly detained and later released under judicial supervision in that case.
He has also attracted attention for remarks about his role in the government-aligned media campaign against the faith-based Gülen movement. In a 2024 interview he said he had helped popularize the derogatory acronym “FETÖ,” used by the Turkish government to refer to the movement as a terrorist organization, describing it as a deliberate effort to shape public perception.
The movement, inspired by the views of the late Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, was declared a terrorist organization by the Turkish government in May 2016 and accused of orchestrating a coup attempt on July 15, 2016. The Gülen movement strongly denies both accusations.
The movement is the subject of constant scapegoating in Turkey, although many of its followers are behind bars on bogus terrorism or coup charges or had to flee abroad to avoid government persecution.