Turkish police detained eight suspects, including the ringleaders, of a criminal organization as part of an operation dubbed “Cage-47,” the country’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Sunday.
The operations, initiated by the Turkish authoroties in the northwestern province of Yalova, were carried out simultaneously in provinces of Kocaeli, Bursa, Yalova and Sakarya, Yerlikaya said on the social media platform X, without specifying the time of the raids.
The police seized four unlicensed pistols, two blank firing pistols, two hunting rifles, a large amount of Turkish lira and a large number of promissory notes, checks, title deeds and digital materials, he said.
He said that it has been suspected that the members of the criminal organization have committed the crime of usury by making people indebted in exchange for exorbitant amounts of interest.
They have also allegedly committed the crime of plunder by seizing the goods, vehicles, companies, cash and real estate by force and fraud, the Turkish minister said, adding they have created fake invoices to give the impression that they were making commercial transactions through the bank accounts of the virtual companies they established. ■
