14 Mart 2020 Cumartesi

TNT History Archives: Ottoman Mint-condition Corruption (1909)/Part IV

// Ed. note:  The details of corruption at the Ottoman mint
continue to emerge, thanks to the painstaking analysis of
the intricacies of Hakkı Halid Bey's chicanery, by 
whistleblower Chemist Alemdarzade Hakkı.//

osmanlı altın pul halinde ile ilgili görsel sonucu

In the ensuing years, Hakkı Bey, a bachelor who had lounged around in
his office for three or four years on a salary of 300-400 kuruş, together
with the married Mehmed Bey, whom Hakkı Bey had appointed through
some tricks to the 'sikke' (coins) directorate of the mint, found a way to
conceal the difference (see end of Part III), thanks to Mehmed Bey's
efforts and intellect.

The technique they decided upon was quite simple with regard to
accounting journal entries and, in fact, experts in "âmal-i erbaa" (the
four mathematical operations) were astonished by its simplicity.
According to what they have admitted, they put the gold stamps they
took from the 'çarkhane' (one of the mint's workshops) into the import ,
section of the journal without recording it and when exporting this gold
they recorded the weight in both the import and export sections of the
journal.

This amazing bond of confidence between the directors of the 'çarkhane'
and the 'sikke' departments was even beyond that of two brothers.
Actually, out of nothing, Hakkı Bey had created the 'sikke' department,
whose director would supervise the 'çarkhane', and so he put his relative
Necmeddin in charge there.  The special 'golden electricity' between
these two officials ('çarkhane' and 'sikke' bosses) made them blood
brothers!

With regard to silver coins,  they used the same technique but on a larger
scale.  During their time, five of the 'çaryek' (quarter) coins had the
weight of four of the older 'çaryek', and most of their 'çayrek' were
1,000/10 or 1,000/25 lighter than the older ones.  In fact, at one time this
caught the attention of Düyun-u Umumiye (Public Debts) officials, who
filed a complaint with the Finance Ministry.

düyun-ı umumiye ile ilgili görsel sonucu
     'Düyun-ı Umumiye' (Public Debts) building in Istanbul.

But our sly director was ready for this and, by putting the rolling mill
and pendulum machines used to regulate the thickness of the plates out
of action, he responded with some scientific jargon he had heard
saying that since these machines were 'broken', it had been impossible
to regulate the weighing processes with surety. In this way, he persuaded
the Finance Minister, who was a friend of his father in any case, to allow
him to purchase all sorts of necessary and unnecessary equipment and
dress up his thievery in legitimacy.

Subsequently, he inflated the price of  6-7,000 lira machines he bought
at auction from German factories , and one has to wonder whether or not
he and his cohorts garnered a commission from this activity.  Because
for some unknown reason these machines were paid for in cash rather
than through contracts.  And yet, the ones used for 'tolerance' still don't
function after a year of efforts to put them into operation and the others
are constantly breaking down - performing worse than the old English
machines that were destroyed, according to the expert workers.

//END of PART IV//



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