The improper use of funds at the public company “went unnoticed”
The irregular transactions carried out by the President of Eyüpspor, who was arrested as part of a betting investigation, were overlooked in previous years. While serving as a manager at a company affiliated with Ziraat, Özkaya transferred a loan of 1.9 billion TL to his own company.
The allegation of illegal betting in Turkish football has turned into a major scandal. As part of an investigation conducted by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, Eyüpspor President Murat Özkaya was arrested yesterday. Özkaya is accused of ‘influencing the outcome of a match’.
The deepening of the illegal betting investigation into Murat Özkaya has turned attention to his time as a manager at Central Oto Kiralama, a company affiliated with Ziraat Enterprise Capital Investment Partnership. Irregularities committed by Özkaya in 2019 and 2020 were uncovered by financial audits. The judicial branch did not take action regarding the irregularities reflected in the Court of Accounts reports.
LOOTING LIKE A MOVIE
The events at Central Oto Kiralama, a striking example of corruption in public institutions, led to comments such as ‘a looting story worthy of a movie.’ The details of the irregularities brought to light by BirGün in 2019 were reflected in the financial audit reports as follows:
The total 400 million TL loan taken by Central Oto Kiralama from banks in 2021 was given to the private company of Murat Özkaya, the Chairman of the Board of Directors who resigned in February 2021, as a ‘vehicle purchase advance’. It was also determined that in 2019, the company received 650 million TL in vehicle purchase advances, while the total value of the vehicles purchased in exchange for these advances was only 144 million 365 thousand TL.
In 2020, the fraud grew even larger. With a Central Oto Kiralama Board of Directors decision, the entire 1.9 billion TL loan obtained from banks was transferred to Murat Özkaya's company in 15 instalments. It was discovered that the majority of the vehicles purchased from the commercial enterprise owned by Özkaya, who was part of the management, did not meet the conditions specified in the terms and conditions. The Court of Auditors' auditors noticed that Central Oto sold 779 of the vehicles it purchased from Özkaya's company on the same day. It was understood that some of the sold vehicles were sold to another company that had intensive commercial relations with Özkaya's company named Metal Oto.
THEY BECAME SPONSORS
The company's name and logo were used as chest advertisements on the jerseys of the Tuzlaspor A.Ş. football team and the Eyüpspor football team. Court of Accounts auditors who spoke with the company's marketing director, general manager, and board chairman regarding the sponsorship agreement received the response, ‘We have no knowledge of such a sponsorship.’
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REFERRED TO THE DISCIPLINARY COMMITTEE
The Turkish Football Federation referred 1,024 footballers to the Professional Football Disciplinary Committee on allegations of betting, including Galatasaray's Eren Elmalı and Metehan Baltacı, Necip Uysal and Ersin Destanoğlu from Beşiktaş, and Boran Başkan and Salih Malkoçoğlu from Trabzonspor. With this decision, TFF 2nd League and TFF 3rd League matches were postponed for two weeks.
On 27 October, Turkish Football Federation President İbrahim Hacıosmanoğlu announced that 371 of the 571 referees working in professional leagues had betting accounts, and 152 were actively placing bets. Of the referees referred to the PFDK, 149 received bans ranging from 8 to 12 months.
The TFF has issued a statement regarding referee Zorbay Küçük, who was referred to the Professional Football Disciplinary Board (PFDK).
The statement from the federation said that Küçük's petition requesting the lifting of the administrative measure had been reviewed and that it had been decided to lift the administrative measure and continue the proceedings without the measure.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Kamu şirketindeki hortum ‘görülmedi’, published in BirGün newspaper on November 11, 2025.
