MERKUR – THE NEW THREE CASES DEFAULTER. IT’S TIME FOR HALIS DIN TO GO

There is a certain wicked irony in the fact that a company that signed the Three Cases Declaration two years ago and committed itself to fight systemic defaulters has itself become a Three Cases Defaulter. But if the signing of this Declaration was originally an attempt to avoid the pressure of the BLACKLIST.AERO administration on its own debts, then there is nothing strange about it. As I said before participation in the Three Cases Declaration is not an indulgence from non-payments.

MERKUR has been moving towards this shameful status, so to speak, long and hard. The company has been in debt for several years. But as the financial condition of the companies included in MERKUR HOLDING changed for the worse, the attitude towards the very fact of the debts of the company’s co-owner Halis Din also changed.

Two years ago, he went to meetings at one of the aviation exhibitions and shed real, genuine tears, trying to get a deferment on Merkur’s debts. However, over time, his attitude towards the existence of debts changed drastically. At first, he began to treat it as a given that he could not change. Reality irritated him, but he understood that something had to be done about it. And although he snapped, he still closed some of the debts.

However, in recent months, Halis Din has changed his attitude towards Merkur’s debts even more dramatically. This position is best reflected in the responses to letters from his creditors, some of whom subsequently created cases in the BLACKLIST.AERO Registry. I think anyone would be outraged if, in response to their another question “When will you finally start paying?” they received a response like this from a co-owner of Merkur:

“If you remind us of our debt every day, then we will pay you later than we intended to do it before”

In relation to many of his creditors, Halis Din has chosen the tactic of such an excuse, like, “we were going to pay you then, but you are too insistent about your debt, so we will pay you later. So to speak, for educational purposes, so that they do not “get cocky” in demanding their money.”

I don’t think that among normal, decent businessmen there is one who would not perceive such behavior as mean and cynical. But what is also important here is that in reality such a position is a simple cheating - no one intended to pay. And the outrage of creditors did not disrupt any of Halis Din’s “plans”. This is just an attempt to justify another delay in payment through feigned indignation.

I know for sure that even those who are ready to dance in front of Halis Din in order to get their money back, as a result of their “dancing” receive only crumbs. Moreover, with a delay of several months. And at the same time, they have no idea when the entire debt will be paid off and whether it will ever be paid in full.

At the same time, one cannot help but notice that for many clients, Halis Din and Merkur were and probably still are a good partner. It is significant that Halis is ready to dance for the sake of clients. But with service providers, the situation is completely different, just in 180 degrees. It seems that clients and suppliers have relationships with two different people. Such duplicity is really frustrating.

There are several versions of what led Merkur to multimillion-dollar debts. Odessa smugglers (they call themselves that, by the way), who have close business and human contacts with Halis, told me that he became a victim of circumstances surrounding the debt of some deceased business partner who had nothing to do with aviation. Others say about Halis Din’s fanatical love for football and point out that the money for the MERKUR JET ERBAASPOR football club had to be taken out of the working capital that was required to pay off aviation debts. And that constantly shifting money from one pocket to another, it is already difficult to understand where whose money is and what it should be spent on.

For a long time, I hoped that Halis Din would come to his senses and stop behaving like an outright scoundrel. However instead, I saw a process called “human degradation”. That is how, over the course of several months, before my eyes, a person revealed more and more new dark sides of his character.

First, there were threats to the claimants. Then, when this did not help, attempts of real blackmail began against me. Halis believed that he had information that could incriminate me - supposedly, earlier, even before I founded BLACKLIST.AERO, I was paid a commission for a flight that was cancelled by the broker for invented reasons. When Halis Din realized that there were no grounds for such accusations and I was ready to speak publicly about that situation and set the record straight, he became depressed. But instead of apologizing for the ridiculous accusations and attempts to blackmail me in order to slow down the publication of cases against Merkur, he began to act like an offended girl.

When, some time later, I contacted Halis Din to inform him that BLACKLIST.AERO had grounds to declare Merkur as Three Cases Defaulter, and made a final attempt to negotiate regarding the return of debts, his fury knew no bounds. He once again, already knowing the truth, decided to remind me of the situation with the cancelled flight, declaring that he would insist on my dishonesty. Like, I have no right to accuse him of anything, since I myself could be involved in a dubious story.

In addition, he, like many other defaulters, dug up articles on the Internet that were created and paid for by other scammers and are part of an information campaign against BLACKLIST.AERO and me personally. Halis found no other way to express his anger and fear than to publish one of these articles (about pro-Russian ransomwares who terrorize debtors’ relatives, and other nonsense) on his LinkedIn page.

Well, I intend to tell you about how defaulters unite to conduct information campaigns against BLACKLIST.AERO in one of the upcoming articles. Right now we are still finishing collecting all the facts. This sneaky gathering of scammers now looks more like the #METOO movement. Where each of the scammers “hurt” by the BLACKLIST.AERO vows to contribute to the fight against us, rubbing their sore spot :)

In the meantime, Halis, I want to tell you the following: your behavior increasingly resembles of the behavior of a hunted animal, a cornered rat. This is becoming obvious to more and more professionals in the aviation market. You no longer have the moral strength to save Merkur from disgrace. In February of this year, you told me that in a month, in March, you intended to leave Merkur and retire. You did not do this. Was this just a trick to get me off your debts for a while while waiting for significant changes in the management structure of MERKUR HOLDING, or were you really going to leave but changed your mind - I do not know. But one thing I can say for sure - the time has clearly come to step away from managing the company and give those you have raised the opportunity to correct the situation.

Not long ago, you left the post of president of the football club ERBAASPOR. In your interview with the Turkish media, you yourself stated that the football players had long been asking you to do this. My advice to you is - do not wait until every second, if not the first, person in the aviation industry starts asking you to do the same. The stages of acceptance are difficult for you, you are constantly moving along a strange parabola from the fourth stage (depression) to the second (anger) and back. Well, the time for the fifth stage has long come.

Still while everything remains as I described in this article, the Administration of the BLACKLIST.AERO Registry calls on all participants in the aviation market NOT TO COOPERATE with companies that are part of MERKUR HOLDING until they pay their debts.

Artem Degtiarov, Chief editor at BLACKLIST.AERO