As speculation mounts that Kadir Aydin, director of failed Turkey specialist Goldtrail, is in the Ukraine administrators for the firm say they still expect him to honour meetings they have arranged with him to deal with the failure.
A comment on travelweekly.co.uk, from former Goldtrail operations director Kerim Ruzgar, claimed Aydin and his family went to the Ukraine on Tuesday, four days after the collapse.
This adds to unconfirmed reports from industry sources this week that he had left the UK for the Ukraine following the operator’s demise. Other sources claimed he was in Turkey.
Attempts by Travel Weekly to contact Aydin on his mobile phone this week have proved unsuccessful.
This week, Jamie Taylor, partner at administrator Begbies Traynor, told Travel Weekly he understood Aydin was in the UK and that he was cooperating with the investigation into the collapse.
But today a spokeswoman for Begbies said she could not now confirm this, but that Aydin was expected to be in the UK to meet with the administrators in the near future.
“There are certain times when he is expected to be in the UK to deal with issues to do with the administration. While that’s going on he is not barred from travelling,” she said.
After questioning Begbies’ account of Goldtrail paying £1.3 million to airlines on the morning of the collapse, former Goldtrail operations director Ruzgar said:
“I also believe that Aydin and his wife and baby have fled to the Ukraine on Tuesday night and cannot possibly be in the UK.”
Other sources close to the collapse have said Aydin cleared his desk in the Goldtrail office in New Malden, Surrey, on Tuesday and had not been seen since.
Earlier this week The Mirror newspaper claimed Aydin was not in the UK after finding no sign of him at his flat and talking to the owner of a local cafe he regularly ate in who said he had not seen him in days.