Turkish-American cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Mehmet Öz, famous for his “The Dr. Oz Show” broadcast in the United States, has filed a criminal complaint against his sister, Nazl?m Suna Öz, in Istanbul, accusing her of forging a will of their father, Mustafa Öz, who died in February 2019.
The television personality-turned-aspiring politician detailed his family’s legal dispute in an affidavit asking a judge to pause sister Nazlim Oz’s suit accusing him of wrongfully withholding rent payments from a pair of Upper East Side apartments owned by their dad, Mustafa, who died in 2019, the court papers say.
The rental income has been going to Nazlim and their other sister, Seval — but Dr. Oz, as the manager of the apartments, said he cut Nazlim off pending another legal dispute that’s playing out in Turkish courts, the filing says. That money is being held in a separate account and he insists he doesn’t “benefit” from the rental income in any way.
The events that took the Öz family to court date back to 2003. Their father, Mustafa Öz, wrote a will on Jan. 22, 2003, leaving the house with garden in Istanbul’s Sar?yer district to Nazl?m Suna Öz.
However, on Aug. 12, 2008, Mustafa Öz changed his will and left all his belongings to the Mustafa Öz Foundation established in the U.S.
According to the new will, Mustafa Öz asked his son to lead the foundation. After he passed away in 2019, a legal conflict started between Dr. Oz and his sister.
Nazl?m Suna Öz opened an inheritance case in an Istanbul court, presenting the judge a new will said to be written on Jan. 22, 2018, one year before their father’s death.
Getting suspicious of this new will, Dr. Oz asked for an expert examination, noting that the so-called will was never known by the family members. Soon after an expert published his report, saying that “the new will was prepared by photomontage and using some paragraphs from the first will from 2003.”
Based on the expert report, Dr. Oz, who lives in the U.S., appointed his lawyer in Istanbul to file a lawsuit against his sister for forging the document.
“It is obvious that this ‘fake will’ never existed,” the lawyer said in the complaint petition. “I am very very sorry. I am just watching the events in shock,” Dr. Oz told daily Hürriyet on April 6.
Nazlim who lives in Turkey has been accused of allegedly hiding money “from her father’s estate to her own use and to the ongoing detriment of her sister, Seval Oz,” the affidavit alleges. Nazlim also allegedly “deprived our mother of funds with which to live, and deprived her of her inheritance,” the papers say.
It was also learnt that Turkish prosecutors have tracked down some of the cash in bank accounts in three other countries which are Netherlands, India and the Cayman Islands, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court filing from Friday March 4.
“We are attempting to recover the funds from those accounts, at least a portion of which represent the very rental payments from the Oz LLC tenants that she now accuses me in this New York litigation of failing to distribute to her,” Dr. Oz’s affidavit alleges.
