The Atlantic made scandalous discoveries about property of Aliyevs’ clan

YEREVAN, JULY 12, ARMENPRESS: Family of Aliyevs which is ruling Azerbaijan owns the main property of one Caucasus state. “Armenpress” reports that about this is mentioned in the article of “The Atlantic” magazine in which are discovered properties owned by children of Azerbaijani President.

“When he was a mere 11 years old, Heydar Aliyev, the son of Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, purchased $44 million in luxury mansions on Palm Jumeirah, the elite artificial archipelago built by Dubai and known for housing both holidaying British soccer players andthieving Russian tax officials. $44 million is, in the words of the Washington Post's Andrew Higgins "roughly 10,000 years worth of salary for the average citizen of Azerbaijan."Together, the three Aliyev children invested in $75 million in Dubai real estate, which certainly is impressive considering that their father's official annual income as a public servant is just $228,000” writes the author.

President’s son Heydar own almost 50 percent of Azerbaijani branch of VTB bank, which is the second-largest bank in Russia and is 75 percent-owned by the Russian government, is also one of the fastest-growing financial institutions on the planet, with retail, commercial and investment arms in 19 countries, including the United States.

The second problem is that in May of this year, Azerbaijan's sovereign wealth fund invested $500 million in VTB's secondary public offering (SPO). It was joined by Qatar's and Norway's sovereign wealth funds and, collectively, all three gobbled up 55 percent of the SPO. "We have been working with the Azerbaijani sovereign wealth fund on a real estate investment in Moscow, their first investment, and they have a 20 percent allocation to Russia so they made a strategic decision to invest in us and become a business partner," said Herbert Moos, VTB's chief financial officer.

It is also introduced the information of Panama's corporate registry according to which On November 9, 2009, Ataholding, an open joint-stock company that manages AtaBank,one of the biggest commercial banks in Azerbaijan, purchased 48.99 percent of VTB's Azerbaijani subsidiary. The remaining 51 percent is owned by VTB and thus mostly owned by the Russian government. As of December 31, 2009, AtaBank's investment was valued at 10,887,310 Azerbaijani manats, which at today's exchange rate is around $13.8 million.

Ataholding is 51 percent-owned by a Panama-registered shell company called Hughson Management, Inc., of which, as the Ataholding financial statement for 2009 informs us, Heydar Aliyev has the controlling interest.

“There have been exactly two prominent Heydar Aliyevs in Azerbaijan's recent history. The first was a KGB chief turned Communist ruler of the Soviet autonomous region (1969-1982) and was the kind of Stalinoid satrap-cum-mafia kingpin who found it necessary to bribe Leonid Brezhnev in order to remain in power. Gorbachev's rise in Moscow coincided with this Heydar's eclipse in Baku. He subsequently became first the de facto head of the republic, as the USSR was falling apart, and then the first president of post-Soviet Azerbaijan in 1993. Heydar ruled until 2003, which is the year he died. That would have made it difficult, though probably not impossible given that Azerbaijanone of the world's most corrupt countries, for him to be found owning banks five years later,” writes the author.