World Food Day 2024: Food Scientists Make Urgent Call for Nutritional Awareness and Reform in Uganda
Shift Media News 
By OUR REPORTERS
INVESTIGATION [SHIFTMEDIA] It has come to the fore that the jailed former chairman of the International Bank of Azerbaijan siphoned over USD 3.5 billion that he used to buy luxury multi=million properties in UK. Jahangir Hajiyev was sentenced to 15 years in jail for this loot in 2016. We shall be serializing scores of top Ugandan politicians, including Ministers who have used similar antics after stealing billions of taxpayers money, only to end up purchasing luxurious properties in UK, Mauritius, US, British Virgin Islands and others.
The wife of Jahangir Hajiyev, the jailed former chairman of the International Bank of Azerbaijan, agreed to forfeit a luxury London townhouse and a U.K. golf club in August after a landmark case found the multi-million-pound properties had been “purchased as a result of criminal activity.”
It was the first time that a U.K. court had prosecuted an Unexplained Wealth Order — a law enforcement tool for investigating assets suspected of being paid for with dirty money.
Now OCCRP has obtained a detailed witness statement from the case which sheds new light on how funds embezzled from the state-run bank flowed through the heart of Europe and into the U.K., where they were funneled into property for Hajiyev and his family.
The 242-page statement from a National Crime Agency investigator claims the funds were siphoned through an account at Banque Internationale à Luxembourg — and that a Luxembourg-based Azerbaijani financier set up bank accounts and companies around the world to allow that to happen.
The NCA witness statement alleges that these companies moved vast amounts of money out of Azerbaijan — often in convoluted patterns through various companies and jurisdictions globally. Bashirov then helped make purchases on behalf of Hajiyev and his family.
Most of the 10 million pounds used in 2013 to purchase the Mill Ride Golf Club in Berkshire, for instance, traveled from Azerbaijan in four parts to shell companies in other jurisdictions that were “associated” with Bashirov, before making their way through a British Virgin Islands company set up by Bashirov, the account at the Banque Internationale à Luxembourg associated with Bashirov’s main company, and then two Luxembourg shell companies.
Bashirov has admitted to setting up many of these companies, but insists he didn’t know the funds that moved through them were stolen.
“Our part was only this: To organize companies, to arrange for investments to go through these companies,” he told an Azerbaijani interviewer last year.
“What happened to this money after it went into the project? That’s not my department.”
He was charged in Luxembourg last month with money laundering, forgery and abuse of professional obligations.
Hajiyev was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Baku in 2016.
Banque Internationale à Luxembourg itself was fined 4.6 million euros by Luxembourg’s financial regulators in 2020 due to weaknesses in anti-money-laundering procedures. It’s unclear if the bank did anything to halt Bashirov and Hajiyev’s efforts. But experts say the NCA evidence raises questions about Luxembourg’s already-scrutinized banking sector and how well it is enforcing regulations.
Read full story : https://www.occrp.org/en/investigation/luxembourg-bank-central-to-purchase-of-high-end-real-estate-with-embezzled-azerbaijan-funds-uk-police-say
