Frankfurt  - The chiefs of an Islamic charity were sent to prison in Germany Wednesday after the Turkish men had admitted siphoning millions of euros away from alms donated by devout Muslims for the poor.

As the trial ended, German prosecutors disclosed that a senior government official in Turkey, Aykut Zahid Akman, who used to live in Germany, had also been a suspect but could not be arrested.

Akman, who chairs the Radio and Television Council that regulates Turkish broadcasting, had received some of the funds embezzled from the Deniz Feneri charity, a Frankfurt prosecutor said.

Opponents of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have alleged in recent weeks that his Justice and Development Party AKP also obtained funds from the scam. Erdogan has categorically denied this.

The German prosecutor said Tuesday she had seen no evidence of money being passed to the AKP.

The 45-year-old founder and head of the German section of Deniz Feneri was jailed for 69 months for embezzlement, while his successor, 40, in the post was given 33 months by the state court in Frankfurt.

The alms were meant for poverty-stricken Palestinians, Turkish slum-dwellers and refugees in Pakistan, but only a part was given to the poor. The defendants kept a big portion for themselves.

The former accountant, 44, of the Deniz Feneri Foundation had his 22-month jail term suspended. The trial had been expected to last much longer, but came to a quick end with a plea bargain.

Presiding judge Jochen Mueller said it was the worst charity fraud case he had ever seen. More than 20,000 donors contributed 41 million euros (57 million dollars) to Deniz Feneri, and 16 million euros of that vanished into defendants' pockets.

The charity had been a vehicle for the defendants to move funds into investment companies in Turkey, to set up a religious TV station, Channel Seven, and to buy a Baltic Sea cruise boat, the Baltic Kristina, operating on the Latvian coast.

The charity raised foreign-relief funds from 2002 onwards among well-off Turkish communities in Germany and the Netherlands through a Deniz Feneri television programme. The title means lighthouse.

Advertisements on the internet, in the press and on a Dutch-based television channel Euro 7 used images of human suffering in Turkey, Pakistan and other nations.

Police closed down the scam last year. The trio were accused of 200 specimen counts of embezzlement.

Akman's name was repeatedly mentioned during the trial.

He is also under investigation in Germany over his role as chairman of a Frankfurt area building society.

He is suspected of fraudulently claiming government housing subsidies and failing to declare the society insolvent in due time, prosecutions spokeswoman Doris Moeller-Scheu said.

The news website Spiegel Online said Akman's lawyer rejected the claim. (dpa)