September 4, 2015

Koza Altın says production monitored by global auditor

Denying claims in the media of discrepancies in its gold production data, Turkey's largest gold miner Koza Altın said on Friday the company is audited by the world's leading auditing firm.

The media on Thursday cited a report by the Finance Ministry's Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) that suggested that Koza Altın -- a subsidiary of Koza İpek Holding, whose Ankara headquarters were searched in a politically motivated raid on Tuesday -- shared incorrect data on its gold production per ton of extracted ore. Koza Altın denied the allegations in a written statement on Friday.

Underlining that the share of gold per ton of extracted ore is defined during and after mining and that each ore mine is designed and built to produce that certain amount of gold reserve explored ahead of time, Koza Altın noted that its gold mines in Turkey are audited by US-based mining consulting company SRK Consulting and that it is impossible for the company to falsify the figures.

The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government delayed allowing Koza Altın to resume operations at three of its four mines in Turkey for months. Koza Altın was denied a routine renewal of required certificates shortly after a major corruption and bribery scandal implicated the AK Party government.

Koza İpek Holding CEO Akın İpek is known to be a supporter of the Hizmet movement, a volunteer-based education and inter-faith dialogue movement inspired by the views of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused the Hizmet movement and its supporters of attempting a coup against his government with the corruption probe and publicly declared a war against the group.

Published on Today's Zaman, 4 September 2015, Friday