ANKARA - Police acting on an international arrest warrant have traced a Turkish father and son who are wanted in a massive business fraud case, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said in an interview in the daily newspaper Hurriyet on Tuesday.
Cicek did not specify in which country Kemal Uzan and his son Hakan had been uncovered by Interpol, but newspapers have in the past said the two were likely in Jordan.
The minister said that Turkey was seeking their return "through legal and political means."
The Uzans, who formerly ran one of Turkey's biggest business empires, at one point held Jordanian passports, but Jordan said in March last year that they had been cancelled.
Cicek said the two men, who have been on the run for close to two years, were in a country which has signed a judicial cooperation agreement with Turkey.
The Uzan empire, once among Turkey's richest, began to fall apart in 2003 when authorities seized control of two power utilities operated by the family, the first move in a judicial onslaught against the clan on corruption charges.
The authorities seized the assets of the family's flagship bank Imar and went on to seize all their 219 companies, including Turkey's second-largest mobile phone operator Telsim, in a bid to recover some 5.6 billion dollars needed to reimburse Imar account holders.
The Uzans claim that the charges are politically motivated and aimed at discrediting Cem Uzan, son of Kemal Uzan, who heads a political party.
Once seen as a rival of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, Cem Uzan's party failed to garner enough votes to be represented in parliament in the 2002 ballot.
03/01/2005 11:21 GMT