Turkish police have arrested Utka Erdem, deputy head of the DenizBank branch in Antalya's Manavgat district, and seven other employees of the bank on suspicion of embezzling customer funds and making illegal cryptocurrency transactions.
As a result of an inspection conducted at DenizBank, it was established that the deputy head of the branch Utku Erdem transferred a total of 205 million liras from the bank's customer accounts to familiar people between 2021 and April 2024.
The DenizBank administration opened a criminal case. Subsequently, the Prosecutor General's Office of Manavgat issued arrest warrants for eight suspects, including the head of the branch, his deputy, as well as several employees of the bank involved in the commission of fraudulent transactions, as part of the investigation of the incident.
The suspects pleaded guilty and told the investigation that the money withdrawn from customer accounts was used to purchase digital assets on foreign cryptocurrency exchanges and was lost during the exchange of cryptocurrencies.
Recall that according to a report by analysts of the KuCoin cryptocurrency exchange, more than 50% of Turkish residents aged 18 to 60 years invest in cryptocurrencies. Over the past two years, this indicator has grown by 12%.
