State-owned bank probed over bad loan

Aysel Alp ANKARA / Hürriyet

Turkish ruling and opposition party members of Parliament jointly slammed state-owned Ziraat Bank for lending 270 million euros to a shopping mall without asking for a guarantee, even though the debtor was already in bad shape financially.

The board chairman and deputy general directors of Ziraat Bank were questioned by the Government Business Enterprises Commission of the Turkish Parliament yesterday for the bad loan that Ora Shopping Mall received from the lender and failed to pay.

The company, which already received 160-million-euro loan from Turkey’s Garanti Bank, visited Ziraat as it failed to pay.

“Didn’t you ask ‘why did your relation with another bank remain at half and you came to us’?” Mehmet Domaç, Istanbul deputy from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), asked yesterday.

Some MPs from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) also questioned the reports prepared during the lending process, which are conflicting over the feasbility of the project.