Transcripts Of Former Ministers Turned Into Environment-Friendly Notebooks

While a gag order was imposed on reporting about the work of a parliamentary commission established to investigate a major corruption scandal, the transcripts of taped conversations allegedly of former ministers showing their involvement in bribery and graft have been turned into environmentally friendly notebooks and delivered to offices in Parliament, according to a story in the Haber Türk daily on Thursday.

Many documents and records of the parliamentary commission investigating corruption have been recycled as notebooks by Parliament and delivered to many who work there.

Last month the commission, which ruled not to send four former ministers who were allegedly involved in graft to a top court for trial, in a controversial move opted for the destruction of voice recordings that were the center of the graft scandal that featured then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, members of his family and four ministers.

Parliament also voted last month against sending the four ministers to a top court for trial. Following this, transcripts of taped conversations of the former ministers were recycled into hundreds of notebooks.

The front part of the notebooks are empty while the back part includes transcripts of the phone conversations featuring Reza Zarrab, an Iranian businessman who is the prime suspect in the Dec. 17 graft trial and is accused of bribing the four ministers.

In the meantime, a statement was made from the Parliament Speaker's Office, saying the papers including the transcripts are waste paper from the commission investigating the graft allegations and do not include any confidential information.

The statement said the Parliament Speaker's Office gives importance to recycling for the protection of the environment, hence turning the waste paper into notebooks, adding that such practice has been in place for two years.

One page in the notebooks includes an alleged conversation between Zarrab and one of his employees, Abdullah Happani.

“Brother, put a beautiful chocolate and Turkish delight box tomorrow on a silver plate. Buy a silver plate. Don't buy an expensive silver plate, buy one and put chocolates on it. Also get a chocolate box and put $500,000 in it. It will go somewhere close to İstinye [an exclusive neighborhood in İstanbul]. It will go to E.G.,” Zarrab tells Happani.

Here E.G. allegedly refers to former EU minister Egemen Bağış, who is one of the ministers allegedly involved in corrupt dealings with Zarrab.