Turkish Officials Swap Toilets for Prostitutes
Fri August 8, 2003 10:06 AM ET
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish authorities are investigating 47 village leaders on charges they siphoned money from a toilet-building project to hire prostitutes, a Turkish newspaper reported on Friday.
Dubbed "A Toilet for Every Village," the state-sponsored project provided cement, steel and other supplies to rural areas without proper sewers in poverty-stricken eastern Turkey.
The village leaders allegedly sold the supplies and went to the Black Sea city of Trabzon where they spent the money on foreign prostitutes, the mainstream Hurriyet newspaper said.
Authorities became suspicious when they discovered a spot market in cheap construction materials and found that 47 of the project's 66 villages still lacked toilets.
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