Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Swedish officials arrest Russian over corruption in Azerbaijan

MARCH 14 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Sweden arrested a Russian national working for the Canadian company Bombardier for allegedly paying bribes in Azerbaijan to win contracts, media reported. The bribery allegations date back to 2013 and focus on contracts to sell train signalling equipment to the Azerbaijani railway company. Azerbaijan has a poor record for corruption.

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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)

Armenian leader flies to Paris for talks with Hollande over Nagorno-Karabakh

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YEREVAN, MARCH 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan flew to Paris to meet with French President Francois Hollande to sign deals on tourism and educational issues as well as discuss the ongoing simmering conflict around the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Earlier this month Azerbaijan said five of its soldiers had been killed in the region and Armenia-back rebels said one of its soldiers had been killed. This was the worst outbreak of fighting since April last year when Azerbaijani tanks rolled into the region controlled by Armenia-back rebels. At least 100 people were killed in the fighting last year.

In an interview with AFP news agency ahead of his trip to Paris, Mr Sargsyan blamed Azerbaijan for the fighting.

“The danger of a new war is constant and will persist until Azerbaijan is persuaded that there is no military solution to the conflict,” he said.

Azerbaijan disputes this and has blamed Armenian rebels for the war in the early 1900s that and was only stopped by a UN ceasefire.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Azerbaijan’s SOFAZ to invest in real estate

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MARCH 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil fund, SOFAZ, has investments worth $1.7b in foreign real estate deals, its press office told the Russian news agency Interfax. SOFAZ started investing in foreign property in 2012.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Azerbaijani president travels to Iran

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MARCH 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev flew to Tehran for talks with his Iranian counterpart President Hassan Rouhani in which both men reaffirmed their commitment to completing a freight railway link between India and Europe. The plan is to ship goods from India to an Iranian port and then load the kit on to freight trains that will run across Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia. As reported, the first freight train travelled between Azerbaijan and Iran on March 5.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)f

Azerbaijan considers smoking ban

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MARCH 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s parliament debated a bill that could ban smoking in public places, media reported, the first step towards imposing tougher rules over smoking and cigarette advertising in a country notoriously fond of the habit. Azerbaijan’s neighbours in the South Caucasus, and also in Central Asia, have already imposed some restrictions on smoking. Smoking is currently banned in Azerbaijan in sports facilities, educational area and healthcare buildings.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Trump’s problematic Azerbaijan hotel deal

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MARCH 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — >> So what has Donald Trump, President of the United States, been doing in Azerbaijan?

>> Trump’s deals with Azerbaijanis have been getting him in trouble. Do you remember the dossier that a former British spy compiled on him last year, during the US presidential election? So incriminating were some of his discoveries about Trump’s alleged dealings with Russia and his potential for being blackmailed that the spy handed over the dossier to the US intelligence services. At the heart of these allegations was a visit that Trump made to Moscow in 2013 during the Miss Universe contest that he owns. There were some lewd allegations from that trip, too lewd to repeat in this family newspaper, but, and this is the point, the trip was set up by an Azerbaijani businessman, Araz Agalarov, with strong links in Russia.

>> Okay, but now I hear that there has been hotel project in Baku which is linked to Trump.

>> Yes, this is a different issue. Trump agreed to lend his brand to a hotel in a Baku suburb in 2012. This was before the US election and during a boom time for the Azerbaijani economy. It was a good place to invest. His daughter Ivanka visited the Tower in 2014 to make sure that the work was going to plan. While she was there, she also met with Trump’s Azerbaijani business partners, and this is where the trouble now lies for Trump. He either picked his business partners carelessly or, worse, was in some way complicit in various dodgy deals.

>> What do you mean? Who were his business partners for this Baku project?

>> Trump’s main business partner was Elton Mammadov, brother of Azerbaijan’s former powerful transport minister Ziya Mammadov who has various businesses, including in the hotel sector. The problem for Trump is that these businesses are alleged to be linked to corruption and also to dealings with Iran’s Republican Guard. This is illegal for Americans under US sanctions. Trump has vigorously denied any links to corruption or doing business with Iran.

>> What has Trump and his team done about this?

>> Before Christmas, Trump quietly cut his links to the unopened Baku hotel and last month, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev sacked Ziya Mammadov as transport minister, although it is unclear if this was connected to the Baku hotel deal.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

HRW criticises Azerbaijan over blogger

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MARCH 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The influential New York-based Human Rights Watch described the imprisonment of Azerbaijani blogger Mehman Huseynov for slander in February as a “new low even for Azerbaijan”. Rights groups have been complaining that the Azerbaijani authorities have been crushing dissenting voices for years using slander and libel laws. Azerbaijani officials have refuted this and said instead that the West was intent on fomenting a revolution in Azerbaijan. Huseynov was well- known for reporting on official corruption.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Trump’s opponents ask questions over Azerbaijan deal

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MARCH 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Opponents of US President Donald Trump verged on accusing him of corruption after they linked him to a hotel in Baku connected to Azerbaijani officials accused of taking bribes and of having links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

A report by the New Yorker said the Trump International Hotel and Tower Baku was linked to Azerbaijan’s former transport minister Ziya Mammadov who has been linked to a business partner who does business with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Some sanctions on dealing with Iran have been lifted but for US citizens it is still illegal to deal with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, directly or indirectly

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

First cargo crosses new bridge from Azerbaijan to Iran

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MARCH 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The first cargo train crossed a new bridge over the River Astarachy, the border between Azerbaijan and Iran, media reported. This is the only railway link between Azerbaijan and Iran and is important because it signifies just how relations between neighbours have improved. The bridge is also vital if a plan to build a north-south trade corridor from India to Russia is to be turned into reality.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Azerbaijan quits EITI governance body after being suspended

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MARCH 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan quit the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a governance watchdog used as a guide by financial institutions to decide whether to give out loans, 24 hours after its membership was suspended for failing to meet a number of demands.

By quitting the EITI, Azerbaijan risks jeopardising multi-billion-dollar loans from financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank to build a $46b gas pipeline to Europe.

Announcing Azerbaijan’s decision to quit the EITI, Shahmar Movsumov, head of the SOFAZ, Azerbaijan’s state oil fund and the country’s top representative at the EITI, said the EITI had been infiltrated by groups which have shifted its agenda away from transparency in the extractive industries towards concerns about human rights and media freedom.

“We consider the Board’s decision on suspension of Azerbaijan as an unfair one,” he said. “The irrelevant facts introduced by different advocacy groups on various occasions show that the Initiative failed to stick to its original mission and objectives.”

The day before at its meeting in Bogota, the EITI had suspended Azerbaijan’s membership for failing to make sufficient progress in improving human right and NGO freedoms.

The move was welcomed by rights campaigners. Tom Mayne, a freelance consultant, said the EITI needed to throw Azerbaijan out of the group to retain its credibility.

“Transparency of oil revenues and respect for civil society go hand in hand, and both the EITI and independent observers have ruled that Azerbaijan has not created the space for free and open discussion of what happens to oil revenues,” he said.

The EITI is based in Oslo. It was set up in 2003 with the aim of setting “the international standard for transparency and accountability around a country’s oil, gas and mineral resources”.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)