OFFSHORE COMPANIES PROVIDE LINK BETWEEN CORPORATE MOGUL AND AZERBAIJAN’S PRESIDENT
By Stefan Candea
Members of Azerbaijan’s first family have had been shareholders in
at least four offshore companies, newly revealed records show.
A corporate mogul whose business empire has won building contracts
worth billions of dollars amid Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s
massive construction spree is tied to the president’s family through
secretive offshore companies.
The businessman, Hassan Gozal, is the director of three British Virgin
Islands (BVI) companies set up in 2008 in the name of the president’s
daughters, according to secret documents obtained by the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The daughters were 19 and 23 years old at the time.
The documents obtained by ICIJ also show that the president and his
wife, Mehriban, a member of Parliament, acquired their own BVI company
in 2003, Rosamund International Ltd.
Why the presidential family established these companies is unclear.
What is clear is that the family took steps that obscured its
involvement in the companies, using various agents to register the
companies and direct them, at least on paper.
The presidential family and Gozal did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated
requests for comment.
The timeline of Ilham Aliyev’s ownership of the offshore company
raises questions about whether he violated constitutional provisions
against members of Parliament operating or owning businesses, according
to Annagi Hajibeyli, president of Azerbaijani Lawyers Association,
a group that is often critical of the government.
Ilham Aliyev was still serving in Parliament when he was director
and shareholder of the offshore company in early 2003. Aliyev became
president of Azerbaijan in October of that year. The records show
that the BVI company was in good standing until May 2004.
In addition to the constitutional provisions relating to members of
Parliament, Azerbaijani law also forbids state officials involved
in overseeing business from being involved in business themselves,
including being shareholders in companies, according to Hajibeyli
and Alimammad Nuriyev, a lawyer and director of the Azerbaijan’s
Constitution Research Center.
“Ilham Aliyev violated this law if he was involved in business
activities during the period when he was a member of Parliament . . .
or president,” Hajibeyli asserted.
ICIJ send questionnaires to Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban via
email and post mail. The president’s press office offered no response
to the questions raised by ICIJ. Letters sent to the president’s
daughters, Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, also went unanswered.
Arzu and Leyla Aliyeva acquired their BVI companies in December 2008,
two months after their father was re-elected for a second term as
president, the secret documents show.
Arbor Investments was registered under Arzu’s name. Leyla is listed
as the owner of LaBelleza Holdings Limited and Harvard Management
Limited. For all three companies, the same offshore middleman was
used – Malaysia-based Naziq & Partners – and all are registered by
Portcullis TrustNet, a Singapore-based offshore services provider.
In registering the companies, the young women listed addresses in
Dubai: two apartments in a luxury resort called Marina Le Reve. Other
apartments in the building, one of the area’s most exclusive towers,
are more than 6,000 square feet each and have asking prices close to
$6 million.
Flame Towers
Hassan Gozal, the corporate mogul listed as a director of Leyla and
Arzu Aliyeva’s companies, is a busy man.
He and his brother, Abdolbari, both originally from Iran, conduct
a wide range of businesses, mostly out of Dubai’s Jebel Ali Free
Trade Zone. Hassan Gozal is the CEO of as many as a dozen companies
operating under the umbrella of a mega-company called Intersun Holding,
where Abdolbari is president and Hassan vice president.
Documents show the Gozal brothers’ business interests have won major
contracts from Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company, where Aliyev
served as an executive before becoming president.
The brothers have also benefited in indirect ways from the country’s
oil wealth – thanks to an oil money-financed building boom that’s
transformed the cityscape of Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, into a forest
of high rises.
In all, their companies have won construction contracts in and around
Baku totaling some $4.5 billion:
* Their holding company, Azersun, is building an ambitious resort
development, the $2 billion Dream Island, which will cover 300 hectares
near Baku.
* Another company they control, Dia Holdings, has won $2.5 billion
in construction contracts in Azerbaijan, much of it financed by
public money.
Dia’s projects include the Fairmont Flame Towers in Baku, three
curving glass-walled buildings whose shape in part pays homage to the
vast natural gas deposits in the region. Dia is also behind luxury
villas built for the presidential administration and the Heydar Aliyev
Center, named for the president’s father, who was his predecessor as
the country’s chief executive.
Hassan Gozal did not respond to repeated attempts by ICIJ to seek
comment from him via email and telephone.
Members of Azerbaijan’s first family have had been shareholders in
at least four offshore companies, newly revealed records show.
A corporate mogul whose business empire has won building contracts
worth billions of dollars amid Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s
massive construction spree is tied to the president’s family through
secretive offshore companies.
The businessman, Hassan Gozal, is the director of three British Virgin
Islands (BVI) companies set up in 2008 in the name of the president’s
daughters, according to secret documents obtained by the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The daughters were 19 and 23 years old at the time.
The documents obtained by ICIJ also show that the president and his
wife, Mehriban, a member of Parliament, acquired their own BVI company
in 2003, Rosamund International Ltd.
Why the presidential family established these companies is unclear.
What is clear is that the family took steps that obscured its
involvement in the companies, using various agents to register the
companies and direct them, at least on paper.
The presidential family and Gozal did not respond to ICIJ’s repeated
requests for comment.
The timeline of Ilham Aliyev’s ownership of the offshore company
raises questions about whether he violated constitutional provisions
against members of Parliament operating or owning businesses, according
to Annagi Hajibeyli, president of Azerbaijani Lawyers Association,
a group that is often critical of the government.
Ilham Aliyev was still serving in Parliament when he was director
and shareholder of the offshore company in early 2003. Aliyev became
president of Azerbaijan in October of that year. The records show
that the BVI company was in good standing until May 2004.
In addition to the constitutional provisions relating to members of
Parliament, Azerbaijani law also forbids state officials involved
in overseeing business from being involved in business themselves,
including being shareholders in companies, according to Hajibeyli
and Alimammad Nuriyev, a lawyer and director of the Azerbaijan’s
Constitution Research Center.
“Ilham Aliyev violated this law if he was involved in business
activities during the period when he was a member of Parliament . . .
or president,” Hajibeyli asserted.
ICIJ send questionnaires to Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban via
email and post mail. The president’s press office offered no response
to the questions raised by ICIJ. Letters sent to the president’s
daughters, Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, also went unanswered.
Arzu and Leyla Aliyeva acquired their BVI companies in December 2008,
two months after their father was re-elected for a second term as
president, the secret documents show.
Arbor Investments was registered under Arzu’s name. Leyla is listed
as the owner of LaBelleza Holdings Limited and Harvard Management
Limited. For all three companies, the same offshore middleman was
used – Malaysia-based Naziq & Partners – and all are registered by
Portcullis TrustNet, a Singapore-based offshore services provider.
In registering the companies, the young women listed addresses in
Dubai: two apartments in a luxury resort called Marina Le Reve. Other
apartments in the building, one of the area’s most exclusive towers,
are more than 6,000 square feet each and have asking prices close to
$6 million.
Flame Towers
Hassan Gozal, the corporate mogul listed as a director of Leyla and
Arzu Aliyeva’s companies, is a busy man.
He and his brother, Abdolbari, both originally from Iran, conduct
a wide range of businesses, mostly out of Dubai’s Jebel Ali Free
Trade Zone. Hassan Gozal is the CEO of as many as a dozen companies
operating under the umbrella of a mega-company called Intersun Holding,
where Abdolbari is president and Hassan vice president.
Documents show the Gozal brothers’ business interests have won major
contracts from Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company, where Aliyev
served as an executive before becoming president.
The brothers have also benefited in indirect ways from the country’s
oil wealth – thanks to an oil money-financed building boom that’s
transformed the cityscape of Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, into a forest
of high rises.
In all, their companies have won construction contracts in and around
Baku totaling some $4.5 billion:
* Their holding company, Azersun, is building an ambitious resort
development, the $2 billion Dream Island, which will cover 300 hectares
near Baku.
* Another company they control, Dia Holdings, has won $2.5 billion
in construction contracts in Azerbaijan, much of it financed by
public money.
Dia’s projects include the Fairmont Flame Towers in Baku, three
curving glass-walled buildings whose shape in part pays homage to the
vast natural gas deposits in the region. Dia is also behind luxury
villas built for the presidential administration and the Heydar Aliyev
Center, named for the president’s father, who was his predecessor as
the country’s chief executive.
Hassan Gozal did not respond to repeated attempts by ICIJ to seek
comment from him via email and telephone.
Family properties
Questions have been raised for years about the first family’s financial
dealings.
In 2010, The Washington Post found $75 million worth of real estate
in Dubai whose owners had names and ages appearing to match those of
President Aliyev’s three children. Nine mansions were purchased in
2009 for about $44 million, far more than President Aliyev’s $228,000
annual pay, the Postnoted, and “roughly 10,000 years’ worth of salary
for the average citizen of Azerbaijan,”
According to Dubai property records, the purchaser of the mansions,
Heydar Aliyev, was 11 years old at the time. Arzu and Leyla’s younger
brother, Heydar, has a matching birthdate.
Documents obtained by ICIJ show the parents acquired their own offshore
company, Rosamund International Ltd., in early 2003, using a reseller
of offshore entities in Singapore, DBS Trustee Limited. The couple
were named as directors and shareholders, listing a personal address
in the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai.
Ilham Aliyev ascended to the presidency in Azerbaijan shortly after
the company was created. The company became dormant in 2004.
In addition to the offshore companies purchased in 2003 and 2008,
the Aliyev family has been connected to several other ventures and
investments:
* Arzu Aliyeva was co-owner of Silk Way Bank, a unit of SW Holdings,
a firm that controls in-flight meals, airport taxi services,
airline maintenance, ticketing and duty-free shops, according to
a 2010 report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. * Azerfon, one
of the biggest cell phone operators in Azerbaijan, was co-owned by
offshore companies in Panama that listed the Aliyeva daughters as
president and treasurer, according to a 2011 story by Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty.
* Arzu Aliyeva owned a house worth $1 million in the Czech luxury
resort Karlovy Vary, according to a 2012 articlefrom the Organized
Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Father and son
On paper, Azerbaijan is making strides towards accountability. The
country has signed several international agreements relating to
transparency and corruption.
Corruption prosecutions, however, have largely been confined to
low-level officials, according to Global Integrity, a Washington-based
research and advocacy group. Another anti-corruption group,
Transparency International, ranked Azerbaijan 139th out the 176
countries on its 2012 Corruption Perception Index. Reporters Without
Borders puts Azerbaijan 162nd out of 179 countries on its 2011-2012
Press Freedom Index.
The Aliyev family has held power in Azerbaijan for decades, long
before the country was a country.
President Ilham’s father, Heydar Aliyev, was member of the NKVD,
the Soviet secret service, in the 1940s, and in the 1960s became
the head of the Azerbaijani KGB. In 1969, he became the leader of
Soviet Azerbaijan, a position he held for almost 20 years, until he
was forced to resign amidst corruption charges.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Aliyev regained
power in the wake of a military coup, taking over presidential powers
and then formally winning the presidency in a national election in
October 1993. He remained president for a decade.
Just before his death in 2003, his son Ilham inherited the country’s
leadership from him, winning the presidency in an election that many
outside observers claimed was rigged in the son’s favor.
In June 2012, in the wake of media reports about the presidential
family’s business interests, Azerbaijan’s parliament voted to put a
veil of secrecy over information about companies based in Azerbaijan,
restricting public access to details about corporate registration
and ownership.
The parliament also voted to give the president and first lady lifetime
immunity from criminal prosecution.
Another Azerbaijani reporter who wishes to remain anonymous for safety
reasons contributed to this story.
Contributors to this story: Khadija Ismayilova
te-mogul-and-azerbaijans-president
ate-mogul-and-azerbaijan%E2%80%99s-president.html
http://www.icij.org/offshore/offshore-companies-provide-link-between-corpora
http://hetq.am/eng/news/25132/offshore-companies-provide-link-between-corpor