UK-Based Firm Tied to Turkmen President’s Nephew Closed

Published: 17 December 2021

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow

A U.K.-based firm that exported petroleum and chemical products from Turkmen state oil and gas plants was dissolved less than a month after reporters uncovered it had at one point been controlled by a nephew of Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. (Photo: Пресс-служба Президента Российской Федерации, Wikimedia, License)

By Zdravko Ljubas

A U.K.-based firm that exported petroleum and chemical products from Turkmen state oil and gas plants was dissolved less than a month after reporters uncovered it had at one point been controlled by a nephew of Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov.

Based on documents from the Pandora Papers, OCCRP, together with its Turkmen partners  Gundogar.org and Turkmen.news, published in October an investigation that exposed how state-owned petrochemical plants in Turkmenistan channel exports through obscure U.K. companies with ties to the President’s nephews.

One of them, Shamyrat Rejepov, held power of attorney over Delanore Limited for some eight months. The company declared a series of beneficial owners who were low-profile Turkmen citizens, but the last in line was Turkish national Asiye Ceren Çap. She applied to strike off the firm from the U.K. Government’s companies register, Turkmen.news reported Monday.

Çap has not been a well-known businesswoman, but she married into the family of Muhammet Çap, a Turkish businessman whose construction firm won state contracts in Turkmenistan in the 2000s, according to the OCCRP investigation.

Reporters also found that a new Çap-owned company called Delanore was created in 2020, as a trader of food, petroleum, and other products. It is tied to the same firms in the United Arab Emirates, Turkmenistan, and the U.K. as the previous Delanore.

Another company mentioned in the October investigation — Caran Holdings LP, which controlled the export of urea produced at the state Garabogaz Karbamid fertilizer plant — is linked to Shamyrat Rejepov’s older brother Hajymyrat.

The brothers seem to be doing well financially as they own 16 apartments in a posh area of Dubai.