Azerbaijani MP resigns after debt scandal

Azerbaijani MP Rafael Jabrailov has given up his MP status after a scandal: after taking out a 300,000 USD loan, he left his MP certificate as a guarantee. 

He was unable to pay off the debt. Now, an additional scandal has surfaced. 

Meanwhile, authorities are saying this happens everywhere, and that critics are just exploiting the situation to disgrace Azerbaijan.

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Who is Rafael Jabrailov, and what’s the story with the scandal? 

Rafael Jabrailov is an MP from the ruling New Azerbaijan Party. He is remembered by the public as an ardent opponent of the creation of a sperm bank in Azerbaijan. 

In 2015, Rafael Jabrailov borrowed 300 thousand dollars from a woman named Tarana Fatalieva to build a house. 

Four years later, when Fatalieva still had not received payment for the debt, she filed a lawsuit against him and won.

This story was quickly leaked to the press and caused a scandal in parliament. While officials were deciding what to do, another person complained that in 2014, Jabrailov had also swindled him of 240,000. 

Despite a legal conviction and another brewing scandal, the authorities have been in no hurry to remove Rafael Jabrailov from office.

On September 30, 2019, he did not appear at the first plenary meeting of the autumn parliament session on. Through a colleague, Jabrailov announced that he was resigning from parliament and would apologize to his voters.

The reaction of the authorities

“The question regarding Rafael Jabrailov was resolved legally. There is no need to discuss it in the press or in the parliament. Such events are taking place all over the world, the culture of resignation exists everywhere,” said Siyavush Novruzov, deputy executive secretary of New Azerbaijan Party. 

He emphasized that foreigners were using the incident to create “anti-Azerbaijani propaganda.”