By Firat Kozok One of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s closest allies said he’s a victim of Turkey’s investment scandal, with as much as 230 million liras ($4.7 million) from his family’s companies trapped in a frozen fund.

Nihat Zeybekci, deputy chairman responsible for economic affairs for Erdogan’s AK Party, said four companies owned by his family had invested in a money-market fund run by Tera Portfoy Yonetimi AS. He also criticized Turkish regulators and the stock exchange for not acting sooner to stop suspicious stock trading.

“If you look at the list of 455,000 victims, you will see that my companies are also on it,” Zeybekci said in an interview. “For more than a year, the relevant authorities could have stopped this, but they failed to do so.”The comments show how Turkey’s crisis is reaching into the heart of the political establishment as top leaders struggle to limit the fallout and stocks sink into a bear market.

Turkey’s Capital Markets Board has said its new fund guidelines, which aim to curb manipulation and increase transparency, were in the works since late 2025 and took time to prepare. As the selloff spilled into the wider market this month, regulators have also sought to calm trading and introduced measures to ease a liquidity crunch.

This week, Erdogan announced the creation of a board led by Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz to oversee the liquidation of more than 100 funds. The unfolding scandal has caught several other top Turkish officials.

Ibrahim Omer Gonul, the former chairman of the Capital Markets Board, will testify as a suspect in the investigation into investment funds, NTV reported Wednesday. AK Party’s Deputy Chair Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya stepped down from her position in recent days after allegations about suspicious stock trades.

Gonul didn’t answer a phone call from Bloomberg News seeking comment. Kaya said in a post on X that she wanted the claims to be clarified “without leaving any room for doubt.”Zeybekci entered parliament for the AK Party in 2011 and later served several terms as economy minister before joining Erdogan’s Presidential Economic Policies Council in 2018.

He said the investments came from excess cash held by four of the 11 companies owned by his family, who are prominent business owners in the western Turkish city of Denizli. The businesses employ about 1,150 people, he said.

Zeybekci said company finance officials told him about two months ago that the cash had been invested in the fund, called TP2, and it was regarded as low-risk. He approved the decision, he said.

Then on Sept. 16, the companies submitted redemption orders, but the money has been trapped as the fund goes through liquidation, according to Zeybekci.

“We made an investment just as everyone else does and as many companies do,” he said. “These were investments generating returns of around 3.5% to 4% a month.”Those gains are significantly higher than most of the money-market funds in Turkey, which tend to earn around 2.5% to 3% a month and are meant as a safe place to park short-term cash. Tera’s TP2 said its portfolio was invested in liquid money- and capital-market instruments with maturities of no more than 184 days.

Zeybekci directed some of his strongest criticism at the institutions responsible for policing markets, saying that authorities at the Capital Markets Board, Borsa Istanbul and Central Securities Depository, would have the tools to detect irregular activity much earlier. “If irregular transactions are taking place, they have every means to monitor them,” he said.

Representatives for the Capital Markets Board and Borsa Istanbul declined to comment, while the Central Securities Depository didn’t respond to calls and messages seeking comment.

While Zeybekci said the frozen assets won’t cause problems for his own companies, he said he’s spoken to other business owners facing turmoil because they can’t access money needed to pay employees.

“Dozens of people have come to me saying, ‘I have to pay wages on Monday. I put the payroll money there. I have hundreds of employees,’” he said.

Money-market funds are widely used by Turkish businesses to manage short-term liquidity, meaning restrictions on redemptions can leave companies temporarily unable to access cash earmarked for salaries, suppliers or other payments.

Zeybekci said authorities should first sell the liquid assets in the funds, and then distribute the proceeds proportionally among investors.

“I suppose people won’t be turning to funds anymore,” Zeybekci speculated, adding that investors burned by the crisis may shift to more traditional savings instruments.