Money Laundering and MASAK Measures

Most matters here do not begin with an arrest. They begin when a payment does not arrive, an account stops working, and the bank declines to explain why.

The bank may not be permitted to explain. An institution that has filed a suspicious transaction report with MASAK is prohibited by Law No. 5549 from disclosing that it has done so, including to the customer. The absence of an explanation therefore does not reveal whether the position is a reporting issue, a MASAK suspension, a separate cybercrime suspension under Article 128/A, a public-law seizure or the institution’s own risk decision.

Türkiye runs an administrative anti-money-laundering system alongside the criminal offence in Article 282 of the Turkish Criminal Code, and the two are frequently confused. The administrative system moves first, moves without notice, and a client can be inside it for a long time before any criminal file exists. A transaction may be suspended for seven business days so that MASAK can analyse it — and that power can be exercised on the reasoned request of a foreign financial intelligence unit, subject to reciprocity, without any Turkish investigation having begun.

Seizure of accounts, property and receivables in a laundering file does not run through Article 128 of the Code of Criminal Procedure directly. Money laundering is not among the offences listed in that article’s closed catalogue; the gateway is Law No. 5549, which borrows Article 128’s procedure without requiring catalogue membership. The better reading carries across Article 128’s concrete-evidence requirements on both the offence and the connection of the property to it. In the ordinary Article 128 route, the valuation report is required before the seizure decision and is prepared within three months, extendable by two months for special reasons. The urgent prosecutor route is different: after judicial confirmation, the report must be obtained within three months and, if it is not, the prosecutor’s order ceases to have effect. MASAK Measures in Türkiye: Suspension, Seizure and Review sets out the sequence and the points at which each measure can be challenged.

What needs to be established

• Establishing what has actually happened to an account or asset, and under which power

• Testing the seizure decision against both limbs of Article 128 and the valuation requirement

• Applications to lift or vary measures, and appeals against refusals

• Analysis of the predicate offence, since Article 282 depends on it

• Advising foreign counsel or a foreign court on the status of frozen assets and what will be required to release them

For foreign counsel. The paper trail is the starting point: the bank’s notification, any decision served on the client, and the account or asset identifiers. From those, the applicable regime and the operative deadline can usually be identified quickly.

For further information, see Insights.