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YEREVAN. – Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan informed about his conversation with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev in Dushanbe.
He wrote about a meeting on his Facebook and promised to present details upon his arrival to Yerevan.
Pashinyan is on a visit to Tajikistan where he is attending the meeting of the CIS Council.
When making territorial claims against Armenia for the second time in the past month, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev was standing on the spot where once an Armenian church used to rise.
Addressing the Azerbaijanis on the beginning of Novruz, Aliyev said a big part of the territory of present-day Armenia “is the historical Azerbaijani land.”
It is noteworthy that Aliyev was standing in front of the Maiden Tower where the Armenian church of the Holy Virgin was standing up until 1990, blogger, journalist Sedrak Mkrtchyan said in a tweet.
The church was built in 1797 or 1799 at the foot of the Maiden Tower, a fortress in Baku. According to a diplomat working in the Azerbaijani capital in 1992, the church was demolished in the wake of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Now, there is an empty space at its former site near the Maiden Tower.
Read also: Lack of int’l reaction inspires more territorial claims by Baku: Armenia
YEREVAN. – A meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani leader has kicked off in Geneva, Armenian president’s spokesperson tweeted.
Serzh Sargyan and Ilham Aliyev are holding negotiations at the initiative of the OSCE Minsk Group.
Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan are holding a tête-à-tête conversation at the moment following their talks in Geneva, spokesperson for the Armenian president tweeted.
Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev held a meeting at the initiative of the OSCE Minsk Group at the Swiss permanent representation to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations.
Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers, OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Igor Popov, Stephane Visconti and Andrew Schofer as well as the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Andrzej Kasprzyk participated in the meeting.
The meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders in Geneva is over.
Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev has already left the Swiss permanent representation to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations, Armenian president’s spokesperson tweeted.
Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev held a meeting at the initiative of the OSCE Minsk Group at the Swiss permanent representation to the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations.
Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers, OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Igor Popov, Stephane Visconti and Andrew Schofer as well as the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Andrzej Kasprzyk participated in th
Armenian, Hellenic, Kurdish, and Other Groups Raise Their Voices against Erdogan and Aliyev NEW YORK (A.W.)— The North American Kurdish Alliance, the “Kevok” Foundation, the Hellenic American Leadership Council, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Eastern Region, as well as other pro-democracy and human rights groups held a “Rally for Freedom” on Sept. 20 demanding an end to the dictatorial rule of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The rally took place in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York City as the two leaders addressed the UN General Assembly.
“The serious deterioration of democracy and disrespect of fundamental human rights in Turkey and Azerbaijan are of grave concern, and reflect the contempt both regimes have for international law,” said ANCA Eastern Region Chairman Steve Mesrobian. “When the world community does not hold them accountable for treating their own citizens so poorly, it should be no surprise that these regimes are emboldened to commit brutal violence and war crimes against Armenians, Kurds, and others outside their borders in Artsakh and Syria, further destabilizing an already unsettled region.”
Protesters at the rally called on the regimes to release jailed journalist and political prisoners,
stop their denial of the Armenian Genocide, end the illegal economic blockade of Armenia and Artsakh, and stop their export of violence. Fifteen personal bodyguards of Turkish President Erdogan are under indictment for their attacks on peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C., in May.
“To deflect attention from these egregious actions, and from the rampant corruption in their countries, both Azerbaijan and Turkey have engaged in ‘caviar diplomacy’ to influence Western democracies, investing millions of dollars to have them look the other way,” continued Mesrobian.
A recent investigative report produced by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and other groups has uncovered close to $3 billion used by Azerbaijan in an apparent money laundering and bribery campaign waged throughout Europe. Turkey has used similar tactics, and has spent millions on lobbying and PR firms in the U.S. and Europe.
Below is video from the protest (Video: ANCA-ER)
Harut Sassounian
Publisher of The California Courier Harut Sassounian has unveiled a new article about how Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and his family are plundering the country’s oil revenues.
The article reads:
The government of Azerbaijan allocates its multi-billion dollar oil and gas revenue in four ways: 1) Bribery; 2) Theft by Pres. Aliyev’s family and his cronies; 3) Military purchases; and 4) Other budgetary matters. No wonder the majority of the people in Azerbaijan live in abject poverty, despite the billions of petrodollars earned by Aliyev’s autocracy.
Last week, we covered Azerbaijan’s bribery at the Council of Europe and throughout the world. This week, we present examples of how large amounts of Azerbaijan’s wealth are stolen by the Aliyev family and members of the ruling clan. A U.S. State Department report on human rights referred to the “pervasive corruption” of Azerbaijan’s increasingly authoritarian regime. Transparency International, in its 2016 global survey of corruption, ranked Azerbaijan among the most corrupt nations — 123rd out of 176 countries.
Last month, reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia revealed in her website that the three largest clients of Pilatus Bank in Malta are from Azerbaijan: Kamaladdin Heydarov, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Emergency Situations, followed by the young son and daughter of Pres. Aliyev, whose names are Heydar Aliyev and Leyla Aliyeva.
Galizia reported: “Heydar Aliyev [President’s son] had first tried to open an account at the Bank of Valetta [in Malta], but was refused on the grounds that he is a major politically exposed person from one of the most corrupt countries, and a serious money-laundering risk.” She further revealed: “60% of Pilatus Bank’s deposits belong to Azerbaijani politically exposed persons.” We can therefore safely assume that the amount of money deposited by these three Azeris is in the millions of dollars!
Interestingly, the owner of Pilatus Bank is an Iranian by the name of Seyed Ali Sadr Hashemenijad who “was caught on camera removing bags of documents from his bank’s premises last Thursday night [April 20, 2017], accompanied by the bank’s risk manager, Antoniella Gauci.”
Unfortunately, the Maltese bank is not the only one where the Aliyevs and their clan have stashed tons of money. There are scores of off-shore companies set up by the Aliyevs and their intermediaries to launder large amounts of cash difficult to trace back to the leaders of Azerbaijan.
There are so many financial scandals involving the Aliyevs that it is hard to pinpoint a specific one; but one of their biggest scandals involves the purchase of luxury real estate in Dubai for $75 million by the three Aliyev children, according to the Washington Post. Heydar Aliyev, the then 11-year-old son of Pres. Aliyev, bought nine waterfront mansions for $44 million in 2009! His two sisters, Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, bought several more mansions for an additional $31 million. These properties were paid for “upfront.” Where do children of their young age get $75 million given that they have no income and their father Pres. Aliyev’s annual salary is only $228,000!
The Washington Post article exposing these scandalous details explained that the “rush to move assets overseas, often with scant regard for returns, is a common feature of many oil-producing nations, where corrupt elites seek to ensure that their wealth is safe just in case political winds at home change.”
OCCRP’s website (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) includes dozens of articles about examples of major corruption in Azerbaijan. In 2012, OCCRP named Pres. Ilham Aliyev its “Person of the Year” for his “links to crimes and corruption.” OCCRP reported that Mehriban Aliyeva, Pres. Aliyev’s wife, is “owner, director or shareholder of a web of offshore companies that were reportedly used by the family to conduct lucrative business dealings worth many millions of dollars.”
Indeed, Pres. Aliyev and his family own a multitude of expensive properties around the world. OCCRP reported that a building in Bucharest, Romania, purchased for $7.3 million, became the headquarters of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, named after Pres. Ilham Aliyev’s father who ruled Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003. The Foundation is run by the family of Pres. Aliyev. According to OCCRP, the purchase of this building involved “offshore transactions, links to corrupt officials and organized crime, insider deals and a peculiar cult of personality for a dead leader.” The Aliyevs also own expensive buildings and houses in London (worth at least $25 million), Moscow (worth tens of millions of dollars), Dubai, and the Czech Republic.
Finally, Pres. Aliyev’s daughters Leyla and Arzu own some of the most luxurious hotels in Baku, according to OCCRP, including the Four Seasons, Sheraton, and the Marriott, among others. An Azerbaijani real estate expert told OCCRP that “the high-end Baku hotels owned or closely connected to the family are valued at $10 billion.”
OCCRP concluded that the Aliyev dynasty has been involved in “numerous secretive business operations across several continents in recent years! Using offshore companies and middlemen, the First Family took over considerable chunks of the Azerbaijani economy — including gold mines, tourism, telecom companies and banks — while buying up luxury properties in various European and Gulf states.”
Reporters Without Borders famous organization has slammed the Azerbaijani authorities regarding the blocking of independent news websites in the country.
The source notes that the Azerbaijani authorities have blocked five leading independent news websites in the country for the past five weeks – newspaper Azadlig, Meydan TV and Turan TV, the programme Azerbaycan Saati and Radio Azadlig.
Recent legislative amendments gave the government the power to block any website “posing a danger to the state or society.” Ordered by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technology, this “preventive” blocking requires subsequent approval by a court – a formality in a country where the justice system acts as the executive’s armed wing.
“By blocking five leading news websites, President Ilham Aliyev’s government is demolishing all the remaining vestiges of media freedom in Azerbaijan,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.
“The persecution of the government’s critics continues to intensify online, offline and even among exiles. The international community must finally end the government’s impunity and hold it to account for its systematic violations of the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” the representative of the Reporters Without Borders notes.
Azadlig newspaper was forced to stop producing a print edition under pressure from the authorities in September 2016. The newspaper’s financial director, Faiq Amirov, has for the past eight months been in prison.
Several members of Azadlig’s staff , have been forced to flee the country in recent months to escape a similar fate.
Reporters Without Borders reminds that Azerbaijan is ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index and Aliyev, whose powers were reinforced by a referendum last September, is on RSF’s list of press freedom predators.
The escalations which Azerbaijan recently provoked on the Nagorno-Karabakh frontline are an attempt by the country’s leadership to deflect public attention from domestic problem, the Azerbaijani-Talish journalist who was recently given asylum in Armenia said today.
At a public debate held at the Ombudsman’s office, Shahin Mirzoyev attributed the tensions to President Ilham Aliyev’s move to appoint his wife, Mehriban, a deputy president.
“It is common knowledge that Aliyev appointed his wife vice president, and the interior minister appointed his son a deputy minister. Those promotions stirred up public sentiments. So what the Aliyev regime is trying to do now is to escalate the situation on the border to divert public attention,” he explained.
Mirzoyev, who faced threats of death penalty in Azerbaijan, said he now feels absolutely safe and comfortable in Armenia.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made a noteworthy statement with respect to the prospects for a resolution of the Karabakh conflict.
“Behind closed doors, we are pressured to force an agreement on the recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence,” Aliyev stated at the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers. “We don’t disclose many details, since there are rules of diplomacy. [But] Azerbaijan will never agree to this.”
As per Haqqin.az news agency of Azerbaijan, he noted that an active campaign has begun against Azerbaijan on this matter.
“As long as we are in power, Azerbaijan will never give its consent to that,” Ilham Aliyev added, and pledged to “restore” Azerbaijan’s “territorial integrity.”
MOSCOW (Arka)— “The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan will hold a meeting next week in Vienna. It is also planned that the foreign ministers of co-chairs of OSCE Minsk Group – Russia, United States, France – will take part in the meeting,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov plans to take part in the meeting of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian in Vienna on May 16.
US State Secretary John Kerry and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault will also take part in the meeting.
“The main aim of consultations that are currently being coordinated, is to try to strengthen the ceasefire regime, reduce military risks, agree on strengthening concrete confidence-building measures,” Zakharova said.
“We proceed from the fact that such meeting may and should facilitate stabilization of the situation in the conflict zone and, of course, create necessary conditions for resuming the negotiations process aimed at achieving comprehensive settlement,” Zakharova added.
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has published information on the property of the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s family.
According to the information, Aliyev’s daughters – Leyla and Arzu – live in a US$26 mln penthouse in downtown London. The penthouse was purchased in September 2006, being registered via an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
Aliyev’s family overall owns property of over US$140 all over the world, these being only the known properties.
“Other international properties include a US$ 25 million London mansion; a flat valued at up to US$ 8 million overlooking the Speakers’ Corner of Hyde Park; nine waterfront mansions in Dubai valued at US$ 44 million; a dacha near Moscow worth at least US$ 37 million; and a US$ 1.1 million villa in an exclusive neighborhood in the Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary,” the information reads.
OCCRP earlier published information revealing the activity of the Azerbaijani lobbyists in the U.S.
