Posted by meb at May 5th, 2008

Turkey’s banking regulatory authority has rejected a request by a European partnership to take over Dutch financial giant ABN AMRO’s branches in Turkey based on intelligence reports connecting the partnership with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization, according to the Hürriyet daily.

Hürriyet reported that the partnership of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Belgian Fortis Bank and Spanish Banco Santander, which recently bought ABN AMRO, failed to receive approval for the handover of the global banking group’s six branches in Turkey. The Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) had requested detailed reports from the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) on all the members of the partnership for security reasons. One of the MİT reports showed that Barclays, Britain’s third largest bank and a partner with a 4 percent share in RBS, had acted as an intermediary in a number of transactions of the PKK in Europe.

The partnership purchased ABN Amro for 71 billion euros in the biggest sale in global banking history. According to Hürriyet, BDDK Chairman Tevfik Bilgin confirmed that the handover request had been rejected but declined to give any further details. The partnership will now have to choose between closing down the Turkish ABN AMRO branches or selling them.
source: Today’s Zaman

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