High-profile hotel chef in the north released on bail after employee was electrocuted

The manager of a hotel in the Kyrenia district was subsequently released on bail on Wednesday 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 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 on her return 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 along with 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, which the autopsy revealed he had been hit by a total of 16 bullets. Demirtas was hit by six.

Falyali’s wife and children followed his car in a second vehicle and were not injured.

Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker had alleged that a drug ring involving former Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s son, Erkam Yildirim, laundered money through Falyali.

Falyali was also arrested in October 2021 accused of assaulting an employee he accused of stealing from his casinoand threatens the employee with his life.

However, the complainant later withdrew his allegations 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 about the then ‘Prime Minister’ of the North, Ersan Saner, was leaked to the mediawith Sedat Peker’s advisor Emre Olur claiming that Peker had obtained the images from Falyali.