Panama Papers: How Family That Runs Azerbaijan Built an Empire of Hidden Wealth

So the secrecy had three layers: 1) The UF Universe Foundation, which controlled 2) FM Management, the Panama company set up by Mammadov, which owned shares in 3) a United Kingdom-based company named Financial Management Holding Limited. According to a flowchart shared with Mossack Fonseca in 2005, the UK company held 51 percent of shares in AtaHolding Azerbaijan.

While there is no doubt that these secret companies existed and paid hundreds of dollars to Mossack Fonseca in administrative fees, it is unclear whether or not the proposed structure to benefit President Aliyev’s teenage and pre-teen children and other prominent Azeris was ever adopted.

UF Universe Foundation was closed in January 2007. Then, in February 2014, months after President Aliyev was sworn in for his third term, a London-based lawyer sought to reactivate the foundation and FM Management Holding Group. Mossack Fonseca was happy to oblige and issued an invoice in exchange for reactivating the company worth nearly $9,000.

Most recently, majority ownership — 51 percent — of AtaHoldings was held by Hughson Management Inc, according to AtaHolding’s online annual report. A 2010 letter signed by Mossack Fonseca listed Aliyev’s daughters, Arzu and Leyla, and Swiss lawyer Mestelan as directors.

ICIJ sought comments from all individuals named in this article and received no responses. In response to previous reports about the family’s holdings, the President’s spokesman said the daughters “are grown up and have the right to do business.”

Despite global criticism of Azerbaijan’s mounting authoritarianism, the Aliyev regime has been a friend of successive US administrations. The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Aliyevs’ Azerbaijan, including millions for military and security training. Azerbaijan’s government is one of the largest buyers of influence in Washington DC and, together with its lobbyists, spent at least $4 million in 2014 alone burnishing the country’s image. The country has taken members of Congress on all-expenses-paid visits to Azerbaijan, lavishing the lawmakers with silk scarves, crystal tea sets and rugs.

Azerbaijan’s importance in energy, as a supply route to American troops in Afghanistan and its potential role in the fight against Isis makes the United States a reluctant critic, said former US ambassador to Azerbaijan Richard D Kauzlarich, now adjunct professor at George Mason University.

“Being where it is — bordered by Russia and Iran in a very unstable geopolitical environment — is a factor that makes it among the more unique countries in the region,” said Kauzlarich, who was US ambassador to Azerbaijan from 1994-1997.

Its levels of corruption and elite control of the economy make it stand out in a part of the world where these things aren’t unusual, he added.

“The franchising out of economic activity to families and clans that are important for maintaining the current regime in power is not an unusual pattern,” said Kauzlarich. “However, it certainly has been perfected in Azerbaijan.”

The fact that Aliyev’s family can be linked to offshore companies is not new. A 2013 investigation by ICIJ showed that Aliyev, his wife and his daughters owned or were otherwise connected to offshore companies. Now Mossack Fonseca’s files greatly expand on what is known and disclose new companies belonging to the president’s two daughters, Leyla and Arzu.

The documents show Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva controlled two previously hidden British Virgin Islands-incorporated firms. It is unclear from the files the purpose of the first company but the second was incorporated in January 2015 to own a British property worth more than $1 million.

President Aliyev’s eldest sister, Sevil, is also shown in the files as the owner of another British Virgin Islands company, Setanon Properties Inc. Again, it is unclear from the files what the company was used for. In the Mossack Fonseca documents Sevil Aliyeva, a composer, listed her address in West London in a neighborhood where average home prices touch nearly $9 million.

Mossack Fonseca’s records reveal that the first family secured secret control of a gold mine, dwarfing a smaller stake they’d been known to hold.

In 2006, Azerbaijan’s government granted mining leases in the country’s west to a consortium of companies that established the Azerbaijan International Mineral Resources Operating Company Ltd. Under the agreement, the consortium would keep 70 percent of the mine’s profit and the Azeri government received the remaining 30 percent, according to a 30-year production agreement.

At the time, opposition politicians criticized the deal’s lack of transparency.

In 2012, Azeri journalists working with the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a non-profit investigative journalism group focused on Eastern Europe and Central Asia, reported that one of the four consortium members, Globex International LLP, was owned, in turn, by three Panamanian companies controlled by President Aliyev’s daughters and Olivier Mestelan, a Swiss businessman and family friend.

One of the reporters was Azeri investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, also a member of ICIJ. In 2015, Azeri authorities imprisoned Ismayilova in what is widely believed to have been retaliation for her exposé of government corruption. Authorities charged Ismayilova with counts of embezzlement, illegal business, tax evasion, and abuse of power and inciting a man to commit suicide. Her sentence: 7½ years.

Mossack Fonseca’s files reveal the leading member of the consortium, Londex Resources SA, which was incorporated in Panama in 2005 and held 45 percent of the consortium’s stake. The files show that, in April 2008, the same three Panamanian companies owned by President Aliyev’s daughters and Mestelan, who shared control of Globex International, became Londex’s shareholders. Globex International held 11 percent of the consortium’s share of the goldmine.

The trio’s control of Londex Resources meant that President Aliyev’s family and inner circle controlled a majority stake — 56 percent — in the consortium.

In January 2016, mine workers protested before Azerbaijan’s parliament, alleging that Londex had not paid wages since 2014, when the mine was abruptly closed.