High-profile hotel chief in north bailed after worker electrocuted

The director of a hotel in the Kyrenia district was released on bail on Wednesday after being arrested in connection with the death of a hotel worker who was electrocuted.

The worker, 29-year-old Lahiru Priyadarshana Perera Kumbukage, was electrocuted on July 28 while working at the Les Ambassadeurs hotel in Kyrenia.

The hotel’s director, a 40-year-old woman had not been in Cyprus at the time but was arrested upon her return to the north on Wednesday morning before being taken to court in Kyrenia.

The woman is the widow of Turkish Cypriot businessman Halil Falyali, who was killed alongside his driver Murat Demirtas in February 2022 when their car was ambushed by men armed with automatic rifles on the road between Kyrenia and Ayios Epiktitos.

Falyali was pronounced dead at the Near East University hospital on the outskirts of Nicosia, with the autopsy revealing he had been struck by a total of 16 bullets. Demirtas had been struck by six.

Falyali’s wife and children were following his car in a second vehicle and were not harmed.

Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker had claimed that a drugs ring involving former Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s son Erkam Yildirim was laundering money via Falyali.

Falyali was also arrested in October 2021, having been accused of assaulting an employee who he accused of stealing from his casino, and threatening the employee with his life.

However, the complainant later withdrew his accusations and Falyali was released before the complainant himself was sentenced to two years in prison the following year.

Meanwhile, a day after Falyali’s arrest, an obscene video involving the then ‘prime minister’ of the north Ersan Saner was leaked to the media, with Sedat Peker’s adviser Emre Olur claiming that Peker had obtained the footage from Falyali.