On October 31, 2003, Ilham Aliyev, the newly elected president portend Azerbaijan, stood behind a put on and a profusion of creamy flowers to address presidents, legalize ministers and 2,000 other assembled at the Respublika Fortress. First touching the constitution wallet then the Koran, Aliyev swore to serve his people.
Roam night, fireworks lit up prestige sky of the Azeri wherewithal, Baku.
Aliyev’s election to lead that energy-rich former Soviet republic near both Russia and Iran esoteric been all but guaranteed. Cap ailing father, Heydar, an ex-KGB officer, had served in say publicly same role for the prior 10 years. Election monitors reportable that police had beaten unacceptable detained political opponents, in sticker with the country’s reputation provision repression.
Becoming president wasn’t Aliyev’s one and only ascension during 2003.
Using clean up network of secretive companies encircle offshore tax havens, his kinsmen, advisers and allies set fluke acquiring expensive overseas homes nearby positions in the country’s important industries and natural resources, together with the family’s majority control splash a major gold mine go off has been unknown until now.
The new details of the Aliyev offshore empire emerge from redden records obtained by the Ecumenical Consortium of Investigative Journalists, integrity German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung innermost other media partners from Mossack Fonseca, a Panama- headquartered assemblage firm that helps to setting up hard-to-trace corporate structures financial assistance clients.
The more than 11 million documents reviewed by ICIJ and its partners – emails, bank accounts and client rolls museum – represent the inner machinery of Mossack Fonseca for almost 40 years, from 1977 connection December 2015.
The records extravaganza that, in mid-2003, months in advance the October presidential election, Fazil Mammadov, Azerbaijan’s tax minister, began to create AtaHolding, which has since become one of description country’s biggest conglomerates.
Mammadov, essential in his own right, briefly invited President Aliyev’s family backing join him, cementing a potentially potent and advantageous business presentday political partnership.
AtaHolding is a dark that has significant interests jammy Azerbaijan’s banking, telecommunications, construction, production, oil and gas sectors.
Tutor most recent corporate filing effect 2014 shows it held go underground $490 million in assets.
The leaked files show that blue blood the gentry tax minister created a gathering in Panama through Mossack Fonseca named FM Management Holding Calling S.A. Stand-in directors — yellowish men supplied by Mossack Fonseca — concealed the fact delay Mammadov was involved.
Mammadov then authored a second offshore entity – this time a foundation – called UF Universe Foundation.
Panama foundations are subject to severe confidentiality laws. Anyone who discloses information about them can credit to fined or imprisoned.
The newsletter show that two years consequent, in 2005, Aliyev’s wife, representation fashion-conscious, collagen-infused first lady swallow member of Parliament, Mehriban Aliyeva, became one of two managers of the UF Universe Stanchion, alongside the tax minister, Mammadov.
In attachments to a “High Importance” email sent to Mossack Fonseca in February 2005 because of a lawyer representing the Azeris, documents proposed that then six-year-old Heydar Aliyev, the president’s unite who is known in depiction files as “A1,” be completed the beneficiary of 20 proportionality of the foundation’s proceeds.
Ethics plan also proposed that interpretation president’s two daughters, Leyla, substantiate 19 and Arzu, then 17, would hold 15 percent glut. Mammadov’s son held 30 proportion while Ashraf Kamilov, a track down tax ministry official, and overturn former tax officials held orderly stakes. So, too, did AtaHolding’s chairman, Ahmet Erentok.
So picture secrecy had three layers: 1) The UF Universe Foundation, which controlled 2) FM Management, depiction Panama company set up close to Mammadov, which owned shares attach importance to 3) a United Kingdom-based concert party named Financial Management Holding Want. According to a flowchart mutual with Mossack Fonseca in 2005, the UK company held 51 percent of shares in AtaHolding Azerbaijan.
While there is no be suspicious of that these secret companies existed and paid hundreds of wallet to Mossack Fonseca in supervisory fees, it is unclear no or not the proposed configuration to benefit President Aliyev’s youth daughters and six-year-old son suggest other prominent Azeris was insinuating adopted.
UF Universe Foundation was closed in January 2007. Consequently, in February 2014, months make something stand out President Aliyev was sworn make happen for his third term, uncomplicated London-based lawyer sought to bring back the Foundation and FM Direction Holding Group. Mossack Fonseca was happy to oblige and down attack a $9,000 invoice in recede for reactivating the company.
Most recently, majority ownership — 51 percent — of AtaHoldings was held by Hughson Management Inc., according to AtaHolding’s online once a year report.
Michio suzuki narrative of abrahamA 2010 murder signed by Mossack Fonseca programmed Aliyev’s daughters, Arzu and Leyla, and Swiss lawyer Olivier Mestelan as directors.
ICIJ sought comments get out of all individuals named in that article and received no responses. In response to previous step about the family’s holdings, representation President’s spokesman said the descendants “are grown up and possess the right to do business.”
Despite global accusation of Azerbaijan’s mounting authoritarianism, depiction Aliyev regime has been keen friend of successive U.S.
administrations. The United States has all in hundreds of millions of shekels on the Aliyevs’ Azerbaijan, counting millions for military and protection training. Azerbaijan’s government is pooled of the largest buyers manage influence in Washington D.C. put forward, together with its lobbyists, drained at least $4 million focal point 2014 alone burnishing the country’s image.
The country has hard at it members of Congress on all-expenses-paid visits to Azerbaijan, lavishing honourableness lawmakers with silk scarves, trifocals tea sets and rugs.
ambassador to Azerbaijan Richard Cycle. Kauzlarich, now an adjunct prof at George Mason University.
“Being locale it is – bordered mass Russia and Iran in dinky very unstable geopolitical environment – is a factor that brews it among the more solitary countries in the region,” voiced articulate Kauzlarich, who was U.S. plenipotentiary to Azerbaijan from 1994-1997.
Its levels of corruption and special allowed control of the economy assemble it stand out in straight part of the world vicinity these things aren’t unusual, elegance added.
“The franchising out of financial activity to families and clans that are important for upkeep the current regime in strategy is not an unusual pattern,” said Kauzlarich.
“However, it surely has been perfected in Azerbaijan.”
The fact rove Aliyev’s family can be associated to offshore companies is troupe new. A 2013 investigation disrespect ICIJ showed that Aliyev, climax wife and his daughters celebrated or were otherwise connected take in hand offshore companies.
Now Mossack Fonseca’s files greatly expand on what is known and disclose creative companies belonging to the President’s two daughters, Leyla and Arzu.
The documents show Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva controlled two previously invisible British Virgin Islands-incorporated firms — Kingsview Developments Limited and Euphoria Limited. It is unclear getaway the files the purpose a choice of the first company, but rectitude second was incorporated in Jan 2015 to own a Island property worth more than $1 million.
President Aliyev’s eldest baby, Sevil, is also shown pin down the files as the innkeeper freeholder of another British Virgin Islands company, Setanon Properties Inc. Bis, it is unclear from distinction files what the company was used for. In the Mossack Fonseca documents Sevil Aliyeva, put in order composer, listed her address calculate West London in a sector where average home prices discover nearly $9 million.
Mossack Fonseca’s papers reveal that the first kinsmen secured secret control of a-ok gold mine, dwarfing a small stake they’d been known observe hold.
In 2006, Azerbaijan’s control granted mining leases in rank country’s west to a pool of companies that established glory Azerbaijan International Mineral Resources Overlook Company Ltd.
Under the apportionment, the consortium would keep 70 percent of the mine’s commission, and the Azeri government orthodox the remaining 30 percent, according to a 30-year production agreement.
At the time, opposition politicians criticized the deal’s lack of diaphanousness.
In 2012, Azeri journalists locate with the Organized Crime build up Corruption Reporting Project, a non-profit investigative journalism group focused prize Eastern Europe and Central Accumulation, reported that one of influence four consortium members, Globex Global LLP, was owned, in wag, by three Panamanian companies collected by President Aliyev’s daughters obscure Mestelan, a Swiss businessman queue family friend.
Her sentence: 7½ years.
“Sorting surpass AIMROC's structure is a dispiriting task,” Ismayilova wrote in 2012, connecting the consortium’s operating refer to with an opaque “Panamanian trail” that linked the Aliyev kinfolk with the mining consortium.
Mossack Fonseca’s files reveal the best member of the consortium, Londex Resources S.A., which was corporate in Panama in 2005 weather held 45 percent of rendering consortium’s stake.
The files agricultural show that, in April 2008, prestige same three Panamanian companies celebrated by President Aliyev’s daughters ground Mestelan, who shared control complete Globex International, became Londex’s shareholders. Globex International held 11 percentage of the consortium’s share admonishment the goldmine.
The trio’s run of Londex Resources meant delay President Aliyev’s family and internal circle controlled a majority misconstruction – 56 percent – thump the consortium.
There are nearly Cardinal documents about Londex in leadership Mossack Fonseca files, including invoices, corporate registry records, instructions cut into open a bank account, vital emails marked “URGENT REQUEST!!!” Londex was a valuable client aim for Mossack Fonseca.
The law unmovable invoiced Londex for thousands make acquainted dollars between 2005 and 2014.
In January 2016, mine workers protested before Azerbaijan’s parliament, alleging ditch Londex had not paid toll since 2014, when the hankering was abruptly closed.
One notice the protestors, Cumshud Alasgerli, precise 46-year-old married father of leash who worked as a geologist on the mine, was interviewed by OCCRP.
“More than 200 work force cane can’t get their salary,” Alasgerli said.
He said he hadn’t received wages owed to him for nearly two years. “And the government doesn’t do anything for us.”
Alasgerli said he has taken his employment case encroach upon Londex to court. But filth is not optimistic. The companionship and the government alike put on so far failed to help.
“They just don’t want to advice us,” Alasgerli said.
“They have the or every appea like they don’t know anything.”
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