Mammadyarov: Armenia, Azerbaijan reach unprecedented mutual understanding over Karabakh

December 19, 2018 By administrator

Armenia and Azerbaijan have, for the first time ever, reached a common ground over Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), Azerbaijan’s foreign minister on Tuesday, summing up his talks the foreign minister of Armenia.

Commenting on the meeting with Zohrab Mnatsakanyan in Milan, Italy, Elmar Mammadyarov also affirmed a mutual commitment to seek ways towards reaching a final breakthrough.

“I think that at the meeting with my Armenian counterpart in Milan, we reached a mutual understanding for the first time ever, something we hadn’t managed for such a long time. We will be seeking ways towards resolving this conflict,” Trend News agency quotes him as saying at a special reception with representatives of the diplomatic corps.

Expressing his country’s support to a peaceful settlement scenario, Mammadyarov added that the issue will dominate their foreign policy agenda also in 2019.

Belarus dictatorship ready to supply weapons to Azerbaijan

November 19, 2018 By administrator

Belarus and Azerbaijan are preparing a contract for the supply of the next batch of Belarusian military equipment, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told reporters after talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

According to BelTA, the two leaders signed a memorandum of understanding between the State Military Industrial Committee of Belarus and the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan on bilateral cooperation in the supply of weapons and air defense equipment.

“In the shortest possible time it will be transformed into a contract to purchase another consignment of military equipment from Belarus,” Ilham Aliyev said.

According to him, Azerbaijan is satisfied with the cooperation with Belarus in this area because its products are effective and of very high quality.

“It is no coincidence that military technical cooperation between our countries has a long history. It is characterized by big volumes and a good trend towards expansion,” the president said.

Record number of journalists jailed as Turkey, China, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan pay scant price for repression

November 8, 2018 By administrator

For the second year in a row, the number of journalists imprisoned for their work hit a historical high, as the U.S. and other Western powers failed to pressure the world’s worst jailers–Turkey, China, and Egypt–into improving the bleak climate for press freedom. A CPJ special report by Elana Beiser

The number of journalists imprisoned worldwide hit another new record in 2017, and for the second consecutive year more than half of those jailed for their work are behind bars in Turkey, China, and Egypt. The pattern reflects a dismal failure by the international community to address a global crisis in freedom of the press.

Source: https://cpj.org/reports/2017/12/journalists-prison-jail-record-number-turkey-china-egypt.php

Britain investigates Azeri Banker’s Wife For Multi-Million dollar Shopping Spree

October 16, 2018 By administrator

By Harut Sassounian

Publisher, The California Courier,

Another Azerbaijan-related major corruption scandal is brewing in Europe. The country’s crooked officials have swindled billions of petrodollars for their personal benefit while the majority of the Azeri people live in abject poverty.

The latest example is on the front pages of most British newspapers. Mrs. Zamira Hajiyeva, 55, the wife of an Azerbaijani banker, has spent over $21 million by shopping at the Harrods luxury department store in London between 2006 and 2016.

The United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency alleged that stolen funds were used to buy a $15 million, five-bedroom house in the exclusive London neighborhood of Knightsbridge, 100 yards from the doors of Harrods. The house is now worth $20 million. She is also accused of spending almost $14 million to purchase a golf and country club in Ascot, The Guardian newspaper reported. Incredibly, Mrs. Hajiyeva owns two reserved parking spaces in Harrods at a cost of $500,000 a year. She was given permission to live in the UK eight years ago under a visa scheme for wealthy investors, without checking her source of funds.

“Mrs. Hajiyeva is the wife of Jahangir Hajiyev, 57, the former chairman of the state-owned International Bank of Azerbaijan. In 2016 he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for defrauding the bank out of $3 billion,” according to Rupert Neate of The Guardian.

Mrs. Hajiyeva’s lawyers in London had petitioned to keep her name, the husband’s name, their nationality and his bank a secret. However, the British court of appeal lifted the veil of secrecy at the request of the media.

The National Crime Agency stated that Mrs. Hajiyeva used 35 American Express, Mastercard, and Visa credit cards issued by her husband’s bank to fund her spending spree. On one trip to Harrods she spent $200,000 on Boucheron, a luxury jewelry, perfume and watches brand. On another trip she bought $132,000 of Cartier jewelry. She also purchased a $42 million Gulfstream G550 jet. Her wine cellar is stocked with some of the world’s most expensive bottles, The Guardian reported. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hajiyeva’s daughter from a previous marriage, who was a student in London, had shares worth $20 million paying dividends of $1.3 million a year. Mrs. Hajiyeva also has two 17 and 20 year old sons from her current husband, who were also educated in private British schools.

Mrs. Hajiyeva’s husband gave her $1.3 million to invest in British government bonds, and received $26,000 monthly expense allowance. However, after her husband’s arrest, she fled Azerbaijan and began selling her family’s silver at Christie’s auction house.

The Azerbaijani authorities are interested in questioning Mrs. Hajiyeva in connection with her husband’s banking case, accusing her and other family members of serving as conduits for Mr. Hajiyev’s scheme to take money out of the country.

Mrs. Hajiyeva is the first person in the UK’s new anti-corruption law — “Unexplained Wealth Order” — designed to target suspected corrupt foreign officials who have potentially laundered stolen money. Justice Supperstone demanded that she explain the source of the funds for her lavish purchases. If she is unable to do so, her properties could be seized. The Judge agreed that “this evidence is significant in the light of the reports of Mr. Hajiyev’s trial allegations made against him included abuse of his position at the Bank by issuing credit cards in the names of family members, through which large debts were run up against the Bank.”

Mr. Jahangir Hajiyev, as chairman of the IBA bank between 2001 and 2008, had an official salary of $71,000 a year. However, Werner Capital, which manages property investment for wealthy people, produced a report in 2011 disclosing that Mr. Hajiyev was worth $73 million, The Guardian reported. The prosecutor, Jonathan Hall, who represented the National Crime Agency, announced: “As a state employee between 1993 and 2015, it is very unlikely that such a position would have generated sufficient income to fund the acquisition of the property.”

In court, Mrs. Hajiyeva stated that she had no knowledge of the source of funds for her purchases, claiming that her husband was responsible for the payments. She described Mr. Hajiyev as “a man of substantial means.” She has hired a team of highly paid British lawyers to defend her in court.

For the time being Mrs. Hajiyeva’s expensive London mansion and the golf and country club remain frozen and cannot be sold.

It remains to be seen if the British government would seize Mrs. Hajiyeva’s properties in London. There are many more such cases which will come before the courts in the coming months, exposing the widespread corruption of Azeri officials who have stolen billions of dollars from their country’s oil wealth, investing them for their personal benefit in many countries around the world!

Congress Must Investigate U.S. Loans To Secretive Azeri Silk Way Airlines

September 4, 2018 By administrator

By Harut Sassounian

Last year, I wrote an article reporting that the Silk Way Airlines of Azerbaijan made 350 secret flights to transport hundreds of tons of weapons from Bulgaria to ISIS terrorists in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries between 2014 and 2017.

We now have a new surprising revelation that Silk Way received $419.5 million of loans from the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) to buy three 747-8 cargo planes from Boeing to continue its sinister operations.

The disclosure was made by a reporter for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. government in 2016. It is noteworthy that Silk Way, “owned by a company with past ties to Azerbaijan’s Aliyev family, won some lucrative contracts from the U.S. military,” according to FOIA documents.

In fact, “Silk Way was given contracts worth more than $400 million with the U.S. Defense Department’s Transportation Command for more than decade,” according to Devansh Mehta of OCCRP. Silk Way transported “ammunition and other non-lethal materials” to Afghanistan as of 2005. “In addition to its relationship with the U.S. government, Silk Way Airlines has also worked as a subcontractor for the Canadian Department of National Defense, the German armed forces, and the French army,” Mehta revealed.

In April 2017, Silk Way increased its purchases from Boeing, signing a $1 billion deal for 10 new 737 MAX passenger planes, according to reporter Mehta. However, it is not known how the new acquisition was financed. Last October, Silk Way announced plans to buy two more 747-8 cargo planes.

Mehta disclosed that “the airline is owned by Silk Way Group, which, at least at one point, was closely associated with Azerbaijan’s ruling Aliyev family (which has used its planes for private trips) and has benefited from benevolent state deals. Information obtained through FOIA shows that Silk Way Airlines took steps to conceal its owners’ identity, perhaps to improve its chances of winning the valuable U.S. loan guarantees and military contracts.”

Mehta added that “Azerbaijan ranks 122nd out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s corruption perception index, while President Ilham Aliyev’s family owns luxury properties around the world worth over $140 million. The Panama Papers and other leaks have implicated the country’s first family as being involved in nearly all sectors of the Azerbaijani economy, from luxury hotels to mining to banking.”

According to the terms of the Export-Import Bank’s $419.5 million loan to Silk Way, in case of default the loss would be repaid by the state-owned International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA). The problem is that IBA has been “implicated in the Azerbaijani Laundromat, a massive scheme that pumped nearly $3 billion out of the country through various shell companies,” Mehta wrote. Furthermore, IBA is not in a position to guarantee the Silk Way loan, as the IBA itself declared bankruptcy in 2015, unable to pay its $3.3 billion debt!

Nate Schenkkan, project director of the Nations in Transit report at Freedom House, a US-based nonprofit that monitors democracy and human rights around the world, questioned the wisdom of EXIM Bank’s loan to Silk Way: “In Azerbaijan, where one family dominates economically and politically, and is then using state institutions to back its economic projects, there’s an obvious conflict of interest.”

Arzu Aliyeva, Pres. Aliyev’s 21-year-old daughter in 2010, was one of the three owners of Silk Way Bank, the financial arm of Silk Way Holding. Since 2017, her name is no longer mentioned as an owner. “Silk Way Holding, also referred to as Silk Way Group (SW Group) on its website, is a conglomerate that has currently listed 11 companies in its portfolio, including the airline,” according to Mehta.

Silk Way Holding dominated Azerbaijan’s aviation sector after the state carrier AZAL airlines was privatized in a highly secretive manner without any bids and tenders. Mehta wrote that “a similar privatization of the telecom sector ended up with the [Aliyev] family earning about $1 billion in bribes in cash and share value, according to an earlier OCCRP story. The investigation also found that the money was funneled to the first family through various secret offshore companies. These companies have enabled the Aliyevs to control stakes in gold mines, telecommunications and construction businesses in Azerbaijan.”

According to a filing in 2006, Silk Way Airlines was owned by IHC (International Handling Company), an offshore entity based in the British Virgin Islands. In a 2017 filing, Silk Way Airlines stated that 40% of the company was owned by IHC, while 60% was owned by SW Holding, “effectively controlled” by Zaur Akhundov, an Azerbaijani citizen. Mehta stated that “IHC is linked to the Aliyev family through its director Jaouad Dbila who reportedly served as a proxy for the first family’s business interests in the past.”

In 2011, a Russian-born manager, Grigory Yurkov, was given power of attorney for both Silk Way Holding and IHC, according to Luxembourg’s official gazette. This appointment was used as a means to conceal the true owners of IHC.

Meanwhile, Zaur Akhundov had mysteriously become the 100% owner of the entire Silk Way Group in 2014. By that time, the firm and its many holdings were already worth billions of dollars, Mehta declared, based on the company’s loan guarantee application. Akhundov, 50, had held several official positions in Azerbaijan. “It is unclear how Akhundov became the owner of a billion-dollar conglomerate with more than 10 aircrafts, an insurance company, a construction company and an aircraft maintenance company, to name a few of the enterprises in the Silk Way Group,” Mehta wondered.

According Schenkkan of Freedom House, “Azerbaijan can be described as a centralized, vertical pyramid where the benefits go to one family that collects rents throughout the economy. This includes all sorts of transactions, not only official state transactions that might involve taxes and public funds, but also things that involve what we normally consider the private sector: import-export, consumer goods, transport — any area of the economy, the family has a stake in it and receives a cut on what takes place.”

The U.S. Congress should hold a hearing to investigate the appropriateness of EXIM Bank’s $419.5 million loan guarantee to Silk Way Airlines, its arms shipments to terrorist groups in the Middle East, and its hidden ownership by the ruling Aliyev family. After all, why should Azerbaijan, a country with billions of petrodollars, be given a U.S. loan?

Source:

By Harut Sassounian

Publisher, The California Courier

www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com

Angela Merkel in Azerbaijan calls for peace with Armenia

August 25, 2018 By administrator

Angela Merkel has offered Germany’s help in forging a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Baku is the chancellor’s last stop on a three-day visit to the South Caucasus.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday that Berlin could help mediate between Azerbaijan and neighboring Armenia to resolve a long-running territorial dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Germany wants to help find peaceful solutions,” the chancellor told journalists in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, adding that the conflict was a major burden on the region.

Merkel called for stronger economic cooperation with Azerbaijan as she sat down for talks with the South Caucasian country’s president, Ilham Aliyev. The pair discussed the domestic human rights situation, the possibility of expanding energy markets to avoid dependency on Russian gas, and efforts to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijan is Merkel’s final stop on a three-day tour that has already taken her to Georgia and Armenia.

Frozen conflict

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous border region, officially belongs to Azerbaijan but was seized by local Armenian forces during a war in the early 1990s following the break-up of the Soviet Union.

For more than 20 years, the two countries have been locked in a bitter dispute, with occasional flares in violence along the border. Azerbaijan has repeatedly threatened to take the region back by force, while Armenia says it will crush any military intervention.

Germany is a member of the Minsk group, which for years has been attempting to negotiate peace under the leadership of the US, Russia and France.

Merkel was expected to return to Berlin later Saturday.

nm/aw (Reuters, AFP, dpa)

US dollars set on fire in Azerbaijan in support of Turkish dictator Erdogan

August 15, 2018 By administrator

US dollars were set on fire in Azerbaijan’s capital city of Baku, as a sign of support for Turkey on which the US has imposed sanctions.

The action took place outside the Turkish embassy, reported Minval.az.

The demonstrators chanted slogans condemning US policy and supporting Turkish economy.

The Cult of Personality in Azerbaijan: Idolizing Former President Heydar Aliyev

July 31, 2018 By administrator

By Harut Sassounian

The worship of former President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev is so exaggerated that an American blogger Andreas Moser on his visit to Baku and Ganja encountered the “great leader’s” monuments and buildings everywhere he went. Moser wrote in his blog a satirical report, excerpts of which are reproduced below for our readers’ great amusement!

Moser started his sarcastic article as follows: “Before I went to Azerbaijan, I was like you: I didn’t know Heydar Aliyev. But then, I had already gotten sick and tired of him by the second day…. Whether you want it or not, Heydar Aliyev will be your guide and constant companion in Azerbaijan. When you fly to Baku, you arrive at Heydar Aliyev Airport. When you arrive by train, you travel on the Heydar Aliyev Express, get off at Heydar Aliyev Station and walk along the wide Heydar Aliyev Boulevard to Heydar Aliyev Square, past Heydar Aliyev Foundations, Heydar Aliyev Schools and Heydar Aliyev Institutes. If you want to take a break from Heydar Aliyev and thus prefer to travel across Azerbaijan by car, you will still see a photo of the ex-president at every intersection, every turnoff and every roundabout.”

Moser started his journey by visiting a park, naturally named the Heydar Aliyev Park, which was “larger than some independent states…. When you have crossed the widest street in the world [12-lanes] after a march of ten minutes, you have reached the parking area. A car park like the one in front of the Olympic stadium. It was planned big enough that all cars in Azerbaijan could park here simultaneously. But it is empty. The public squares in the city were already overdimensioned, but this here is megalomania at a North Korean level…. Once you have walked through the triumphal arch (as big as in Paris and, for the avoidance of any doubt, adorned with the name of Heydar Aliyev), which is the actual entrance, you have to traipse for another mile to reach the Heydar Aliyev Museum. Just like people had to walk through a long hall in the royal palace before meeting the king.”

Making his way through the Park’s army of cleaners and scrubbers, “cleaning maniacs,” Moser came across an oversized statue of the “great leader” with his name engraved on it in golden letters, in front of the Heydar Aliyev Museum. Moser discovered that “the museum is three floors high, with a glass dome, much marble, much gold and white leather armchairs. Typical dictator kitsch. If you have ever visited the Gaddafis, the Husseins or the Trumps, you are familiar with it. I am the only visitor, which startles the man behind the desk so much that he turns off his YouTube video, jumps up and henceforth follows my every step, always four to five meters to my side and always looking at his phone when I look at him. We are the only two people in the whole building.”

While the massive building of the Heydar Aliyev Museum is highly impressive, there is not much in it, except for some propaganda about the “great leader.” The Museum “only has dozens of display boards about the life of Heydar Aliyev with hundreds of photos of him. Protected by glass, there are a few books about and by him. Two-meter wide TV screens are ready to show biopics….” Moser was also impressed by Heydar Aliyev’s vast collection of photos: “Heydar Aliyev in a field with farmers, Heydar Aliyev with soldiers, Heydar Aliyev with children, Heydar Aliyev as an archaeologist, Heydar Aliyev with a water melon, Heydar Aliyev at a busy market.”

Moser presented Heydar Aliyev’s background by quoting prize-winning Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski who wrote: “At first, Heydar Aliyev was head of the KGB in Azerbaijan, then, in the seventies, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the republic. He was a disciple of Brezhnev, who appointed him Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR. He was fired from that post by Gorbachev in 1987. Heydar Aliyev was part of Brezhnev’s circle — a group standing out for deep corruption, preference for any kind of luxury and overall debauchery. They displayed that corruption with provoking openness, not ashamed in the least.”

Moser stated that the Polish journalist’s description “could be the motto for the museum, actually the whole park or indeed for the whole country. For someone who was already famous for open corruption under communism, an independent Azerbaijan with gushing oil wells must have been the mother of all dreams. Thus, it comes as no surprise to meet the whole Aliyev family in the Panama Papers [offshore secret accounts].”

Moser concluded his humorous article by remembering other Heydar Aliyev Parks in Podgorica, Montenegro, Tbilisi, Istanbul, Ankara, Bucharest, Kiev, “and maybe soon in your hometown. You simply have to talk to your city council about it. Azerbaijan will pay for everything.”

In his last sentence, Moser described Azerbaijan “as a strange country. But at least I don’t have to visit North Korea anymore.”

In addition to Moser’s article, Wikipedia has a whole section titled, “Heydar Aliyev’s Cult of Personality” as follows: “Every city and town in Azerbaijan has a street named after Heydar Aliyev, including one of the central avenues of capital Baku. According to official information, there are 60 museums and centers of Heydar Aliyev in Azerbaijan.”

Furthermore, there are statues of Heydar Aliyev in over a dozen countries around the world. However, Azerbaijan suffered a major embarrassment in Mexico City when its sensible City Council decided to remove the massive statue of Heydar Aliyev from a park on the city’s main avenue that Azerbaijan had paid to have renovated. “Human rights activists had objected to the statue and pointed to the repressive nature of Mr. Aliyev’s rule,” according to BBC News.

My advice to Azeri worshippers of Heydar Aliyev is to worry more about the fate of their current President, Ilham Aliyev, rather than the deceased Heydar Aliyev, because Armenia’s recent ‘Velvet Revolution’ may soon spread to Azerbaijan, which might be more bloody than velvety!

Azerbaijan hints could strike nuclear power plant in Armenia

July 25, 2018 By administrator

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has declared that there are certain targets on the territory of Armenia whose destruction will lead to “human extinction for centuries.”

The statement came after Nagorno Karabakh Defense Minister Levon Mnatsakanyan said that the Defense Army will immediately strike the Mingachevir Hydro Power Station in Azerbaijan in the event of necessity.

The Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan did not specifically mention the Metsamor nuclear power plant in Armenia, but the NPP is theoretically the only facility whose destruction could lead to “human extinction for centuries” in the area. However, any catastrophe at the plant would endanger not only Armenia, but also Turkey, Iran, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

“The most modern weapon systems of our armed forces, possessing destructive power are capable of destroying all important military facilities and strategic communication lines of the rival in a short period of time,” the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a statement, 1news.az reports.

At a meeting with reporters, Mnatsakanyan said that Mingachevir HPP is included in the tactical plans of the Karabakh Defense Army as a target.

Azeris enraged by invite of Russian singer due to Armenian surname

July 24, 2018 By administrator

singer Zara Mgoyan

The possible arrival of the Russian singer Zara Mgoyan in Baku has caused a scandal among Azerbaijani Facebook users, which fails to calm down for several days. The reason behind such a development is that Zara has an Armenian surname and sings a song titled “My Armenia”.

According to information posted on social media, the singer was invited to join the music festival Zhara-2018, the main organizer of which is Russian singer of Azerbaijani descent, the son of a powerful businessman and former son-in-law of the Azerbaijani President Emin Agalarov, Jamnews.net reports.

Zara is an unwelcome guest in Azerbaijan, because she has been openly supporting Armenia on Instagram.

Comments in Facebook range from extremely aggressive posts to ironic ones: “Shame on those who have invited an Armenian singer to Baku and to those who let that happen! What a disgrace!”; “Be cursed, traitors of the motherland!”; “Let’s [bring in] Serj Tankian and the SOAD!”.

The main argument in defense of Zara is that, she is not an Armenian by nationality, but a Yazidi (Yazidis are a Kurdish ethno-confessional group).

The festival will be held from July 26 to 29.

Famous Russian singers of Armenian origin have previously performed in Baku. In such cases, not only their ethnicity counts, but also their behavior and position on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. For example, when the Russian singer with Georgian roots Soso Pavliashvili went to Baku with a concert in 2016, the Azerbaijani public resented his statements that he “went to Karabakh and will go” in the future too. Nevertheless, the concert was held to a full house.

But during the World Cup of 2011, Azerbaijanis tried to throw stones at the Armenian boxers.