SOFIA, Jan 7 (AFP) - Bulgaria on Friday extradited the nephew of former Turkish president Suleyman Demirel, Yahya Murat Demirel, who is wanted at home for massive fraud, and his wife, the Bulgarian interior ministry said.
"They have been transferred to the Turkish authorities," a ministerial spokeswoman told AFP.
Demirel and his wife, Aysegul Esenler, were arrested in the Black Sea port city of Bourgas on December 31 for illegally entering Bulgaria. They arrived in Bourgas on board a Turkish ship carrying false identity documents, accord to border police.
Demirel, who used to be a director of Turkey's Egebank, had been forbidden by the Turkish courts to leave the country, where he is facing trial for allegedly defrauding the state to the tune of 1.2 billion dollars (900,000 million euros).
"Due to Egebank, whose owner Yahya Murat Demirel used to be, Turkey sustained financial losses of 1.2 billion dollars," the head of Turkey's directorate for fighting trafficking and organised crime wrote in a letter to Bulgaria's interior ministry general secretary Boiko Borissov.
"We are calling for your personal support for extraditing Yahya Murat Demirel to Turkey," the official added.
Demirel and Esenler were escorted to the Malko Tarnovo border post between Turkey and Bulgaria on Friday morning, the ministry spokeswoman said.
01/07/2005 11:57 GMT - AFP