AZERBAIJAN: BRIBERY ALLEGATIONS HIT HEADLINES
03:18 pm | Today | Social
A video ostensibly showing a member of Azerbaijan’s parliament asking
for a bribe has caused a rare public scandal around the issue of
corruption.
On September 20, Elshad Abdullayev, formerly rector of the Azerbaijan
International University, told journalists that politician Gular
Ahmadova had demanded two million manats (around 2.5 million US
dollars) to secure him a seat in parliament.
The hidden-camera film appears to show a conversation involving
Abdullayev, Ahmadova and another woman, Sevinj Babayeva in the run-up
to the 2005 parliamentary election.
“I shot this video and recorded my meetings and telephone conversations
with Gular Ahmadova and Sevinj Babayeva. I sent a CD with the video,
together with an application to launch a criminal case against Gular
Ahmadova, to the prosecutor general,” said Abdullayev, who is currently
in France.
He lost his job when the authorities closed his university two
years ago.
Abdullayev said he released the film footage onto the internet after
he failed to get the prosecution service to act on the case.
Amid the wave of anger that followed, Ahmadova resigned from parliament
and Babayeva was removed as head of Baku City Library.
Ahmedova has denied any wrongdoing, telling the APA news agency that
the video footage was manipulated.
Once the video was in the public domain, prosecutors felt compelled
to respond and launched a criminal case.
On September 28, Ahmadova announced she was standing down as a member
of parliament, so that her position would not be seen as obstructing
a fair investigation.
Before the investigation even began, Ali Ahmedov, deputy head of the
ruling Yeni Azerbaijan party, condemned his colleague Ahmedova and
said she had lost the moral right to represent the party.
In the course of the video posted on the internet, speakers mention
the name of Ramiz Mehdiyev, head of the presidential administration.
Speaking on October 3, Mehdiyev denied any involvement in the
alleged wrongdoing. It was, he said, a smear campaign against the
Azerbaijani government and its representatives, but one that would
not be successful.
The opposition has seized on the case. Isa Gambar, head of the Musavat
party, said the scandal showed the depth of corruption in the current
government.
“The rector of a university, the director of a library and a deputy
are bargaining over seats in parliament,” he said, calling for
“massive protests”.
Ali Karimli, head of the opposition Popular Front, said the case
showed that parliament must be dissolved so that fresh elections
could be held.
“This video fully confirms that parliament was elected by false means,
and that all the seats were sold for money,” he claimed.
International watchdog groups say corruption is a major problem in
Azerbaijan. The country has always scored poorly on Transparency
International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Last year, the country
was ranked at 143 out of the 183 countries surveyed, slightly worse
than the 134th place it got in 2010.
Seymur Kazimov is a freelance journalist in Azerbaijan.
The article is published by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting
(iwpr.net)