Erdogan Family Acquired Tanker Through Offshore Deal, European Media Says

The family of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are owners of a 26.5-million-euro ($29.64-million) oil tanker, which was acquired under a secretive offshore arrangement, a consortium of European news outlets reported Friday.

The Belgian newspaper Le Soir, Spain's El Mundo, L'Espresso of Italy and the French online site Mediapart are members of European Investigative Collaboration (EIC), a cooperative initiative in investigative journalism.

The outlets began publishing on May 19 an investigation called the "Malta files," delving into more than 150,000 documents from the Mediterranean tax haven. The Maltese government has said there are no secrets to be found in the cache.

According to Friday's report, the Erdogan family became owners of an oil tanker called Agdash through companies registered in Malta and on the Isle of Man, a UK tax haven.

A quarter of the finance was provided by Sitki Ayan, a Turkish businessman who is a friend of the Erdogan family, and three-quarters by a Turkish-Azeri billionaire, Mubariz Mansimov, who owns the Istanbul-headquartered transport group Palmali, the report said.

The website Marine Traffic (www.marinetraffic.com) lists Agdash as a 13,000-tonne vessel built in 2007.

EIC said that neither Erdogan's office, members of the family said to be involved in the operation, nor Mansimov nor Ayan answered requests to respond to the report.