Coordinated steps underway to address fund market issues: VP Yılmaz

ANKARA

Administrative and judicial measures are being implemented in a determined and coordinated manner regarding problems identified in a certain segment of the country’s fund market, Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz said on Oct. 20.

In a statement posted on his social media account, Yılmaz said capital markets play a highly important role in Türkiye’s development process and stressed that the markets would continue to grow stronger once the issues that recently emerged in certain funds are resolved.

Yılmaz said the Fund Coordination Board, which he chairs, has been working intensively on the issue.

“Ordinary liquidation processes are being carried out rapidly, while legal arrangements for extraordinary liquidation are on Parliament’s agenda. Intensive and multifaceted efforts are being made to ensure that unfair and excessive gains are returned to the system and paid back to investors,” he said.

Yılmaz also said it was wrong to distort the measures and regulations aimed at preventing abuse and manipulation and use them to cast doubt on the entire capital market and healthy funds operating within it.

He noted that around 10 months ago he had objected to the perception that regulations introduced at the time regarding certain abused funds were being interpreted as measures targeting the whole market.

Yılmaz said the same principle applied today, arguing that portraying measures taken against problematic funds as if they were directed at funds operating in compliance with regulations, which account for more than 90 percent of the market, harms both the system and investors.

Yılmaz said authorities were pursuing an approach that seeks to eliminate problematic structures without damaging the broader system.

Yılmaz reiterated that investing in funds, stocks or other capital market instruments is not a crime and is, on the contrary, a policy supported by all government plans and programs.
“Engaging in unlawful transactions in these areas, disrupting the market, committing fraud and carrying out manipulation are crimes,” he said.

“Whoever has engaged, or engages, in unlawful practices will undoubtedly face the consequences. Protecting those who operate in accordance with the rules, the system as a whole and the rights of investors is a shared responsibility for all of us, particularly independent regulatory and supervisory authorities,” he said.