Kyrenia, Cyprus. The north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel on Thursday denied claims that he took a £300,000 bribe to help facilitate the construction of a cable car in Kyrenia. The allegations were raised by social media journalist Serdinc Maypa, who released a sound recording of a telephone conversation involving an unnamed businessman.
Recording and alleged timeline
Assertions made during the recording point to the call having taken place between 2016 and 2018, when Ustel was a backbencher in the north’s legislature, with Huseyin Ozgurgun having been the ‘prime minister’ at the time.
In the recording, the businessman was quoted as asking for Ustel’s support to bring the matter to the attention of the north’s cabinet.
“Unal said the matter should first be brought to the cabinet’s agenda. That is why he said we needed to first bribe the transport minister,” he said, with that role at the time having been filled by Kemal Durust, who was arrested and bailed in 2024 on suspicion of document forgery.
The businessman said that following the initial conversation with Ustel, he gave £200,000 to Durust, before giving Ustel his £300,000 in three instalments, with the last of those instalments having apparently been left at a small supermarket near the Kyrenia land registry office.
Ustel’s response
Ustel described the recording as “completely unfounded, baseless and fabricated”.
“This operation is not just a smear campaign, it is a planned political attack targeting me, my office, our government, our state and our democracy. I state clearly and unequivocally that the recording in question is not true,” he said.
He said “an attempt is being made to create a public perception and engage in political engineering through this fabricated and manipulated content,” and added that “we will not remain silent in the face of such provocations, and we will do what the law requires”.
Timing of the recording’s release
Ustel also said the fact that Maypa released the recording on the day he was due to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara is “no coincidence”.
What do you make of Ustel’s claim that the recording was released to coincide with his meeting in Ankara?
