In my planned presentation I want to focus on unsuccessful attempts of an Armenian banker, once the biggest sarraf of the Ottoman state Mkirdich Cezayirliyan, to regain economic and political power. Cezayirliyan was not only a banker but also a successful entrepreneur. In 1840s he was a key personality in the Ottoman political life. He operated in various fields. He was a tax-farmer, factory owner, financier, philanthropist and also active in communal politics. In 1850 his wealth reaches its summit. Strangely in this year he was accused of embezzlement, arrested and imprisoned. During his captivity most of his property was sold out and his earlier sources of income were either auctioned or taken away. After spending approximately two years in prison Cezayirliyan leaves Istanbul for London and from there he sends numerous petitions to the Ottoman administration and tries to regain control of the assets he lost. To increase his chances he obtains British citizenship. This political leverage does not bring the expected success and he returns his hometown, Istanbul as a broken person and dies approximately a year after his return. The petitions he sent from London to the Sublime Porte provide us with a rare opportunity to listen to an extraordinary Ottoman subject and hear his personal views and feelings about not an extraordinary practice of confiscation in the Ottoman Empire. The style and the contents of Cezayirliyan’s petitions change in the course of his unsuccessful struggle. His personal biography and the period in which most of his petitions were written are very informative to understand and interpret these petitions. In my presentation I will attempt to place his exile years within his life span and his career in order to be able to understand his point of view and his very personal perspective on state-subject relationship in the Ottoman Empire of the mid-nineteenth century.