According to reports from the Sabah daily, Uzan was found while jogging alone in the neighborhood. A story that ran in yesterday's Sabah said Uzan, who is wanted by Turkish police as well as Interpol for "embezzling money in a private bank," has been holed up in a luxurious residence in Paris that rents for 4,000 euros a day. He was reported as having 10 bodyguards, clearly living in the lap of luxury.
When confronted by reporters, the first words that came out of the fugitive businessman's mouth were apparently “How did you find me?”
Uzan is waiting on a French court's decision on whether or not to grant him asylum status. Paris says it won't extradite Uzan pending his request for political asylum despite the “red alert” posted by Interpol to arrest and extradite Uzan to Turkey.
The request from Turkish authorities to have Uzan placed in Interpol's red alert status has been accepted by Interpol, however reports say that it has yet to be placed in the official records of the police organization. The notice came in the wake of an application by Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF) lawyers and the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office to the İstanbul 8th High Criminal Court on Oct. 2 to issue an arrest warrant for Uzan on the grounds that he is a suspect at large.
In a related development, Abidin Cevher Özden, known as “Banker Kastelli,” the infamous banker who shot himself last year, was recently found to have been in possession of shares of the Uzan family's Çeaş and Kepez companies, which were believed to have been sold in their entirety to Libananco, a Greek-Cyprus based company. Prosecutors believe that the shares found in Özden's vaults were evidence of further fraud demonstrating that the entirety of the company was not sold to Libananco. Observers believe that the newly discovered shares will also pave the way for additional charges on the claim of fake shares for Uzan.
The Uzan family attracted media attention in 2004 when the government seized more than 200 of their companies in what authorities described as an attempt to collect on debts totaling billions of euros. The seized companies include the Star Media Group, cement factories and Turkey's second-largest mobile telephone network, Telsim. The government said the move was necessary to stop the Uzans from siphoning off company assets. The Uzans have also been locked in a legal battle with US telecommunications equipment maker Motorola and Finland's Nokia over nearly $3 billion in loans to Telsim.
