 |
| Courtesy kibrispostasi.com |
Investigation continues in the case of a bank manager brought to court on charges of embezzling 38,160,000 Turkish lira. Of course amounts in lira always sound astronomical but in hard currency this would not have been trivial - $1,564,603 CAD, £880,214.
Cyprus Mirror circumspectly refers to the accused only as BK, employed by a bank branch in Nicosia, and even avoids mentioning the employee’s gender. Though this discretion may be made easier by the idiosyncrasies of the Turkish language, in which the story was presumably first written. Third person singular lacks gender in Turkish, so that he, she (and it) would all be represented by the Turkish pronoun o. However, did see an earlier account of the misappropriation in English where the manager’s name was given as Bahar Korakan and the pronoun used was she. In any case, it’s a small country and presumably the only people who would not already have heard the name of the accused would be foreigners.
The embezzlement seems to have been going on for two years or more, during which time the woman bought two BMW’s and lost a lot of money in casinos. This last is more than irresponsible - it’s also illegal. Casinos are legal and a major tourist attraction but TRNC citizens are not permitted to visit them, although it’s not news that some do. Due to the seriousness of the crimes, and also because she is considered a flight risk - and “flight” in this case could mean simply crossing the border to the South, albeit showing passport - Korakan is to remain in custody while the investigation continues. One suspects that otherwise the temptation to head for the border with a forged or stolen passport would be fairly high as the crimes in question are punishable by life in prison.