Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ may be forced to declare assets

Turkish Cypriot ‘prime-minister’ Huseyin Ozgurgun, who has been under fire recently over the origins of his fortune, will be obliged to declare his assets in the case he is elected to the new ‘assembly’ following January’s elections, it was reported on Friday.

According to Turkish Cypriot daily Afrika, ‘speaker’ of the Turkish Cypriot ‘assembly’ Sibel Siber said that if Ozgurgun is elected to the new ‘assembly’ after the January 7 elections he will be obliged to declare his assets and income.

Ozgurgun’s political opponents have been calling on him to make his assets public and justify where they came from after it emerged that he owns two villas whose total worth is around €1.46m, one in Ayios Epiktitos in Kyrenia and the other one in Bellapais, and he had withdrawn from a bank in the north around €590,000 in one day.

This information was reportedly given to court by Ozgurgun’s estranged wife’s lawyer during the couple’s divorce hearing.

This raised questions as the monthly salary of the ‘prime-minister’ in the north is reportedly around €2,870.

According to Afrika, leader of the People’s Party (HP) Kudret Ozersay has filed an application to the ‘assembly’ calling for an investigation into Ozgurgun’s assets to determine whether it had changed since he assumed office.

Siber said that in case there is a significant change in their assets, the ‘deputies’ are obliged to declare this to the ‘presidency of the assembly’ within a month.

Ozgurgun, Siber reportedly said, had declared his assets after the elections of July 2013 and made no other declaration since because his term has not ended yet and therefore it is not possible to make any comparisons as regards the value of his assets then and now.

In a written statement, Tufan Erhurman, leader of the Republican Turkish Party (CTP) called on Ozgurgun to make an announcement regarding his bank accounts and added: “His silence can-not be accepted. If you cannot make an announcement on this, Ozgurgun, then you should immediately withdraw your candidacy”.

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