Two Turkish companies of a Cypriot-Norwegian fintech entrepreneur with ties to a Maltese-registered payment provider are under investigation for allowing the laundering of criminal assets.
Ozan Elektronik Para Anonim Şirketi, an electronic money institution, has been allegedly “used to introduce criminal assets into the financial system under the guise of legitimate commercial activity,” according to the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office statement.
Meanwhile, prosecutors allege that Aveon Global Sigorta A.Ş., an insurance company majority-owned by Ozan Özerk, was allowing “money to be transferred under the guise of insurance premiums or commercial transactions”.
Turkish authorities have reportedly seized 72 million TL (some €1.47 million) of assets in relation to the investigation, linked to illegal betting activities. Ozan Elektronik has confirmed it has been placed under a trustee, which the prosecution said was in order to “preserve its financial structure and prevent the destruction of evidence”.
“Upon completion of the compliance procedures and controls required by legislation and by the ongoing investigation, the return of customer and merchant funds will commence,” Ozan Elektronik said in a statement posted to LinkedIn last week. Aveon Global Sigorta did not respond to a request for comment.
UK corporate records confirm that Ozan Özerk is the beneficial owner of the targeted Turkish companies. Our reporting partners at OCCRP, CIReN, VG and Times of Malta could not confirm Özerk’s status or whereabouts, and they could not reach him for comment.
Özerk’s other companies also hold financial licenses from other countries, including Malta. In Malta, he is the founder and beneficial owner of OpenPayd Financial Services Malta, an e-money institution. This company is not under investigation in Türkiye.
OpenPayd’s spokesperson said the company “is aware of reports concerning investigations by Turkish authorities into two companies, Ozan Elektronik Para A.Ş. and Aveon Global Sigorta A.Ş. which are owned by the same UBO as Openpayd. Those companies are not held within the OpenPayd group of companies, and we do not share operations with any of these companies.”
The spokesperson added that “This matter does not affect OpenPayd’s operations or the services provided to its clients as the UBO has no involvement in the board of directors or management teams of the respective OpenPayd entities. The company will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as appropriate.”
Alleged scammer platform held account at OpenPayd
Scam Empire, a collaborative investigation led by OCCRP that included Amphora Media and Times of Malta, revealed how OpenPayd Financial Services Malta processed transactions for networks that allegedly con ordinary people around the world out of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Reporters found no evidence suggesting the company was aware the payments were linked to scams, but Malta’s Arbiter for Financial Services has indicated that payment processing companies should shoulder greater responsibility for protecting victims of such schemes.
Scam Empire revealed that victims were often led to believe that they were making payments to their own accounts, held at financial institutions, when, in reality, the accounts belonged to the alleged scammers.
Reporters found that numerous scam victims, many in Spain and the UK, transferred large amounts to the account of CurrencyRock UAB, a Lithuania-based company trading as Insirex, which used an account opened with OpenPayd to transfer the funds further.
OpenPayd, established in Malta in 2016 and licensed in 2019, was one of the payment firms used by alleged scammers to funnel money from would-be investors to fraudsters via sham financial trading platforms. When contacted by Scam Empire’s reporters, the company acknowledged its relationship with entities linked to the alleged scam, but said it had terminated this relationship “all for reasons related to their failures to maintain adequate controls”.
In one instance, a total of €2.5 million in small payments over three months was entered and rapidly withdrawn from the OpenPayd account held by CurrencyRock.
OpenPayd told reporters that “it monitors all transactions to/from its clients for fraud or other financial crime red flags, including through a comprehensive fraud monitoring programme designed to combat fraud from end customers”.
A spokesperson for the Malta Financial Services Authority, which regulates OpenPayd, declined to comment on specific individuals or ongoing investigations.
“However, the authority takes note of any information that may be relevant to the fitness and properness of persons linked to MFSA-licensed entities and will take appropriate action where necessary,” the spokesperson said.
Victims filed complaints against OpenPayd with Malta’s Financial Arbiter
In 2024 alone, three victims of various scams filed complaints with the Financial Arbiter in Malta after studying the account numbers of their scammers and identifying OpenPayd as the service provider that had opened these accounts.
In all cases, OpenPayd argued against any obligations to the victims because the company did not have a business relationship with them. Instead, OpenPayd only had a business relationship with the accused companies.
In one case, which concerned Hasbix Analytics sro, OpenPayd declared to the Arbiter that the accused company had been added to OpenPayd’s Fraud Monitoring Programme.
“Hasbix was seemingly left operating without suspension under a ‘60-day grace period’ permitted by OpenPayd before the relationship and account of Hasbix with OpenPayd was eventually ‘fully terminated on 29 May 2024’ after ‘a 60-day notice for Hasbix to cease operations and stop any transactions on the account, in line with OpenPayd’s terms and conditions’,” according to the case documents.
“If the Client fails to improve their management of fraud and/or reduce its fraud rates within a reasonable period of time, we terminate the relationship,” the representative added before specifying that relationships with 21 clients were terminated due to fraud-related reasons over the past three years and that its monitoring system identified 0.07% of transactions on their platform as fraudulent.
In all three cases, the Financial Arbiter concluded that the victims were ineligible to seek justice in Malta by not individually being the financial service provider’s customers.
“I am concerned not only with the quantity but also with the quality of these fraud schemes,” Financial Arbiter Alfred Mifsud wrote in the institution’s newsletter.
“Get-rich-quick schemes are invariably too good to be true. They are carefully laid out to tempt vulnerable consumers to try their luck with a small sum. Once inside the scheme, it gets progressively more difficult to extricate themselves out, and they are quite often convinced to continue paying into the false scheme until, finally, the truth is exposed, with hurtful results – both financial and psycho-social.”
However, the legal loophole that left OpenPayd without responsibility for facilitating payments demanded from victims by alleged scammers is being closed by recent legislation.
In April, Amendments to the Arbiter for Financial Services Act were adopted, updating the definition of an eligible customer. The new provisions state that “in the case of suspicious fraudulent payment transactions involving financial services providers, the victim of fraud exhibiting immediate, genuine and legitimate interest shall be deemed to be an eligible customer of any one of the financial services providers involved in the suspicious fraudulent payment transaction and this proviso shall be applicable with effect from 1st October 2025”.
“The aim is to render all victims of fraud as eligible customers of any licensed financial services provider involved in the suspected fraudulent payment transaction,” financial services arbiter Alfred Mifsud wrote in reply to the reporters’ questions before the amendments were adopted.
Already in February, the Arbiter ruled that OpenPayd failed to protect “unquestionably a vulnerable, old person who was being aggressively manipulated by fraudsters”. It further stated: “The Arbiter does not accept that the Service Provider has no responsibility for the damages suffered by the Complainant when it was the Service Provider who offered and enabled the vIBANs [virtual IBAN] service to the third party”.
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