Cemil Onal had worked as assassinated Cypriot businessman Halil Falyali’s financial advisor
A man who had given a series of interviews in which he made allegations of a deep money-laundering and smuggling network based in Cyprus involving some of the most powerful men in Turkey, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was shot dead on Thursday night, the Dutch police confirmed.
A spokesperson for the Dutch police informed the Cyprus Mail that the victim of a shooting at a hotel in Rijswijk, a suburb of The Hague, which took place on Thursday evening, was Cemil Onal.
Onal was the former financial advisor of Turkish Cypriot businessman Halil Falyali, who was himself shot dead in February 2022 near Kyrenia.
Local news website Omroep West reported that the hotel’s owner had said he had seen “a man approaching without a face covering,” who then fired shots at the victim before running away.
An eyewitness said he had “heard three bangs and then saw someone run past”.
“The man had a gun hanging in his belt and showed it to me. Then he ran past me into the woods,” he said.
Onal had himself been arrested in the Netherlands in 2023 in connection with the Falyali assassination but successfully fought extradition to Turkey saying that his life would be in danger if sent back to the country.
His assassination comes after he gave a series of interviews to Cypriot news website Bugun Kibris regarding Falyali’s dealings with the highest levels of Turkey’s government and its ruling AK Party.
Onal had made reference to “dirty money being laundered”, bribes, and a “dirty network”, and has, according to Bugun Kibris, handed documents to American and Dutch intelligence.
At the centre of his allegations are a reported 45 or 46 cassette tapes which Falyali had kept and intended, if and when necessary, to use as blackmail against powerful figures.
One alleged such file was released in October 2021, the day after Falyali was arrested on suspicion of assaulting an employee. The file was a video of the north’s then ‘prime minister’ Ersan Saner engaging in obscene acts on a webcam and was leaked to the media by Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker.
Peker’s adviser Emre Olur had claimed that Peker had obtained the footage from Falyali, while Peker himself had claimed that a drugs ring involving former Turkish prime minister Binali Yildirim’s son Erkam Yildirim was laundering money via Falyali.
According to Onal, Erdogan and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who was also allegedly involved in the illicit business, appointed the son of longtime Erdogan ally and former controller of his discretionary funds Maksut Serim as Turkey’s ambassador in the north with the aim of recovering the tapes.
Yasin Ekrem Serim was appointed as ambassador last summer and, according to Onal, told, “get those tapes and bring them back, that is how you will rise in the state”.
However, it has been reported that while Turkey’s National intelligence organisation (Mit) had discovered that there were a total of 45 or 46 such tapes, Serim only recovered 40, and kept the other five for himself.
Hakan Fidan then reportedly forwarded the tapes to Mit head Ibrahim Kalin, who informed Erdogan of the situation. The contents of the missing tapes are not known, but it has been claimed that Erkam Yildirim and Halit Fidan are both mentioned.
Onal said Erdogan then summoned Yasin Ekrem Serim to Ankara to ask him about the missing tapes, with Maksut Serim then stepping in to defend his son.
Erdogan then reportedly told Maksut Serim that he would “fully investigate” whether the rest of the tapes existed, and told his son, “I trust you because of your father. If there are any missing tapes, go and get them, but I am removing you from the embassy, and removing your father from his duty”.
Rumours first surfaced that Serim would be sacked on February 4, and he was officially relieved of his duties three and a half weeks later on February 28 after Turkish opposition political party CHP leader Ozgur Ozel had first alleged that the Serim family, the Falyali family, and Erdogan were acting in league with one another and potentially involved in criminal activity.
Turkey’s presidential communications directorate slammed the allegations, describing them as “fictitious” and “unfounded”, while the country’s foreign ministry promised to take legal action over the matter, describing the allegations as “unfounded” and “not based on any concrete evidence”.
On Wednesday, Aysemden Akin, the journalist who had interviewed Onal, had reported that she had received a death threat over the interviews.
She said she had received a telephone call from a Turkish number and been told by a woman that “I want to protect you”, and that if she did not immediately stop publishing her interviews with Onal, she would be killed.
Akin also reported that she was told “three people have been on the island for days to ‘do what is necessary’”.
She said the telephone call lasted 27 minutes and that she had recorded it in its entirety and forwarded the recording to the Turkish Cypriot police.
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