Following Panama Papers leaking, the speculations grew about publishing names of some countries’ politicians. From Britain to Azerbaijan, there were names released in the confidential documents. The leaked documents contained names of family members of the Azeri President Ilham Aliyev.
So far, Aliyev’s family members have not reacted considerably to the leaking but the remarks of the Azeri government’s spokesman have added to the complexity and ambiguity of the case. The Panama Papers contain names of Aliyev’s wife Mehriban and his three children Leyla, Arzu and Heydar as stockholders of a couple of offshore shell firms which have provided three covering layers for Aliyev family’s riches.
Recently, some 2.6 terabytes of secret documents of activities of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca have been sent to the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. The documents are about foundation of some 240,000 offshore companies mostly aiming at money laundering, tax evasion and fortune hiding as well as other illegal activates. Among many names, the names of family members of Azerbaijan’s president are also observable.
The documents disclose that according to a letter sent to Mossack Fonseca’s office in Panama in 2010, 51 percent of the shares of Azerbaijan’s company Ata Holding were owned by a company named Hughson Management whose heads are some people called Arzu and Leyla Aliyev. Ata Holding is active in such sectors as oil and gas, building construction, banking, mining and communication. The total capital of the holding firm is said to have been $480 million. It is also released that highly complicated ways were used to hide the identity of the Ata Holding’s real owners. The majority of the holding’s shares are owned by a British holding which itself belongs to FM Management founded in Panama by Fazel Mamadov, the former finance minister of Azerbaijan.
FM Management is a subsidiary of UF Universe Foundation headed by Mehriban Aliyev. The FM Management has links with a firm located in British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. The major shareholder of the Virgin Islands-based firm is the sister of Azerbaijan’s president.
Fazel Mamadov has also founded, with the help of Mossack Fonseca, UF Universe Foundation which is headed by President Ilham Aliyev’s wife Mehriban Aliyev.
According to the Panama Papers, in 2005 each of Aliyev’s daughters Arzu and Leyla, then 17 and 19-years old, have been given 15 percent of UF Universe Foundation’s shares. Some 20 percent of the stocks went to the son of the Azeri president Heydar Aliyev, who was only 6-years-old at that time. Fazel Mamadov’s son has also been granted 20 percent of shares of the same foundation. The Azeri president rewarded, in 2007, a consortium that was operating six gold mines in west of the country to a British and three other foreign companies whose key shareholders were the daughters of Ilham Aliyev. Both Leyla and Arzu Aliyev own 45 percent of shares of the mining company Londex Resources S.A, which is active in Azerbaijan, and 11 percent of shares of the company Global International which together account for operation of 56 percent of Azerbaijan’s gold mines.
The Panama Papers include some 400 documents of Londex Resources S.A. The documents suggest that 45 percent of Azerbaijan’s gold fields are owned by Londex Resources S.A. Ilham Aliyev’s daughter founded, in 2015, two more companies in British Virgin Islands, and a villa worth over $1million is recorded in the name of one of the newly-founded companies, according to the leaked documents. The Panama Papers repeatedly named a Swiss businessman beside the names of Leyla and Arzu Aliyev. Leyla is also the editor-in-chief of Baku fashion and life style magazine. Reacting to the leaked documents, Azer Qasimov, the spokesman for Azerbaijan’s president, has said that “the children of President Ilham Aliyev are mature Azeri citizens, and certainly they could have their own businesses, and the law never bans this.”
Aliyev under spotlight
Ilham Aliyev rose to power in Azerbaijan, the country of rich oil and gas reserves. His father Heydar Aliyev was a former agent of KGB, the main security agency of the former Soviet Union. Following Soviet Union’s break-up, Heydar Aliyev ruled the country for 10 years. After him his son Ilham took over the power in the country. Azerbaijan politics’ observers say that in the year that a presidential election was held in the country the police forces launched a clampdown on the opposition forces and made many arrests. Now President Aliyev is facing a new challenge after years of presidency as he has been using a clandestine network for administrating family firms.
The disclosed documents suggest that in mid-2003 the former Minister of Finance Fazel Mamadov founded Ata Holding. The observers say that the holding is actually is an outcome of mixture of the largest Azerbaijan’s companies. A very influential figure, Mamadov asked Aliyev family to join his venture.
Ata Holding is active in a set of areas including banking, communication and mining as well as construction, oil and gas production.
After Panama Papers leaking, Aliyev family has been brought under focus. Now they would probably face gold miners’ outcry. A 2014 published report has asserted that the mining company Londex Resources S.A had not paid its mine workers’ salaries for several months, which at the same year sparked workers’ protests.
source : abna24
