Watchdog

The children of Azerbaijan's former security chief have acquired a number of a luxury properties in Britain, including a $21 million home in London, an investigation revealed.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev fired National Security Minister Eldar Mahmudov in 2015. No reason was given for his dismissal by the authorities in the oil-rich, ex-Soviet republic.

Now, customer files hacked from the Cayman National Bank in November 2019, and then published online, reveal that Mahmudov's family has built an estimated $111 million business and property empire.

A joint investigation of the leaked data by reporters from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Finance Uncovered, and Transparency International shows that nearly all the assets were acquired through companies linked to Mahmudov's son, Anar, 36, and his daughter, Nargiz Mahmudova, 31.

Among the properties acquired by the siblings were office blocks in the coastal towns of Poole and Bournemouth valued at around $16.7 million, according to the investigation.

The investigation also revealed that Anar Mahmudov holds the deeds to a four-story property bought for around $21.4 million in Knightsbridge, an upscale neighborhood in London.

In 2018, Anar Mahmudov's mother-in-law, Zamira Haciyeva, who lived in London, was found to have spent more than $21 million at the luxury store Harrods over a decade.

In February, Haciyeva lost her appeal against a court order to reveal the source of her money. She was the target of Britain’s first unexplained wealth order (UWO).

Lawyers for Anar and Nargiz Mahmudov told Finance Uncovered that the family's wealth can be traced back to an ancestor, Aslan Ashurov, who made his fortune in the 19th century.

They said the siblings' assets were all properly registered and accounted for.

The investigation also found that the Mahmudovs also own properties and companies in Spain, Luxembourg, and Lithuania.

With reporting by The Guardian

MOSCOW -- Police in Moscow have detained 32 people, including a State Duma member, several municipal lawmakers, and journalists who came out to protest against the jailing of prominent Russian journalist Ilya Azar, an independent political watchdog says.

OVD-Info said eight activists were also detained on May 29 in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg.

Most were later released from police custody, OVD-Info said.

Azar, a 35-year-old local legislator and journalist for the independent Novaya gazeta newspaper, was sentenced to 15 days in jail the previous day for repeatedly violating Russia's strict protest laws.

He and his supporters were detained while or before holding single-person protests amid the lockdown imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Activists vowed to continue protesting in Azar's support, arguing such single pickets can't be classified as "mass public events" and should therefore be allowed.

In Moscow, many Azar supporters were detained near the Interior Ministry's main directorate before starting their single-person pickets.

Those detained included Moscow City Duma member Mikhail Timonov and seven municipal councilors, including Yulia Galyamina, Elena Rusakova, and Denis Petrov, according to OVD-Info and Interfax.

Two journalists for Ekho Moskvy radio station, Aleksandr Plyushchev and Tatyana Felgengauer, were also detained.

Meanwhile, the city police said in a statement that "holding any public events in Moscow is banned" due to the stay-at-home quarantine rules imposed over the coronavirus epidemic.

Azar was detained outside Moscow’s police headquarters on May 26 while protesting against the jailing on extortion charges of an activist who has worked to expose violations within Russia's law enforcement agencies.

His jailing triggered outrage among journalists and opposition activists. Thirteen of them were detained while picketing the police headquarters on May 28.

Amnesty International accused the authorities of "crushing activism and impinging on human rights to silence critics."

The Russian authorities should not use the coronavirus epidemic as "an excuse to restrict freedom of assembly any more than is strictly necessary to protect public health," according Human Rights Watch.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe representative on freedom of the media, Harlem Desir, said he was "alarmed" by the detention of the detained journalists and called for their immediate release.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow tweeted that "the right to #freedomofexpression should not be a casualty of #COVID-19."

With reporting by Interfax