EXCLUSIVE: Seychelles Trading Company Chief Executive Siana Bistoquet Approved a $1 Million Advance Into Contractor Director Jean Pierre Morin’s Personal Bank Account on a $7.6 Million Cold-Store Deal

It sits in the audit as an entry, in the flat language auditors use. Section 2.10 of the Special Audit of the Cold Storage Facility Project records that the first instalment on the Seychelles Trading Company’s cold-store contract, SR 14.3 million, was paid on 13 April 2022 not to the contractor, SeyTurk Limited, but into the personal bank account of SeyTurk’s own director, Jean Pierre Morin. The sum was 18 percent of the contract price.

The payment was made on SeyTurk invoice ST10001, and it was made with the approval of the chief executive of the Seychelles Trading Company, Siana Bistoquet. The audit states the destination in one sentence: the money went to Morin’s personal account instead of an authorized bank account of the company. In the Auditor General’s assessment, the payment exposed the state trading company to a large financial risk had the contractor defaulted. Every payment that followed it went to company accounts.

The contract behind the entry was the trading company’s turnkey cold storage facility, signed with SeyTurk Limited on 31 March 2022. Final payments on it reached SCR 109,438,240.79, excluding value added tax. Morin is one of SeyTurk’s three directors and shareholders, holding 40 percent of the company alongside Osman Ethem Karaduman and Adem Oran at 30 percent each, the holdings the Auditor General took from the company’s own registration certificate.

The second name in the audit’s payment chain held no company account at all. Eric Talma was employed by the Seychelles Trading Company from 1 June 2022 to 1 January 2024 as Project Coordinator, engaged to oversee the cold-store project. Payments on the contract were released on the strength of documents called Development Reports, and the Development Reports were Talma’s.

The audit’s finding on those reports is short. They were skewed towards the contractor, a state of affairs the Auditor General records as indicating a potential conflict of interest.

When Talma resigned from the trading company, he apparently joined the contractor, SeyTurk Limited. On 2 April 2025, when the finished facility was handed over, the signature on the handover certificate for SeyTurk was his, signed, the audit records, as Architect of SeyTurk.

The advance and the coordinator stand in the same document, at sections 2.10, 2.11.4 and 2.13.2 of the Special Audit of the Cold Storage Facility Project, signed by Auditor General Gamini Herath on 16 March 2026, a document obtained by SecretsReporters.

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