Azerbaijani opposition demands the authorities to provide explanation on Pandora Papers

Azerbaijani opposition demands authorities to report on Pandora papers

The Azerbaijan Movement for Democracy and Prosperity has issued a statement on the Pandora papers published in independent media. The oppositionists demand that President Ilham Aliyev and his family report on the facts about them that were mentioned in the material.

“According to Pandora’s Dossier, the Aliyev family’s real estate trade turnover in London in 2006-2016 amounted to 429 million pounds sterling or one billion manat [about $ 590 million]. No one doubts that dirty corruption money is the source of this business. For the reason that it would take Ilham Aliyev 3,070 years to accumulate such an amount, given his average salary for the reporting period”, reads the statement of the Azerbaijani Movement for Democracy and Prosperity.

The Azerbaijan Movement for Democracy and Prosperity was established in 2015. It is headed by economist, Ph.D. Gubad Ibadoglu. Ibadoglu currently lives in the United States and works as an educator at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

The opposition movement said in a statement that “investment in the real estate business in London by the Aliyev family during the years of his leadership of the country is the result of abuse of power, involvement in corruption and illegal business activities”.

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“Along with the plundering of the country’s wealth and the state budget, this confirms the facts of corruption, which the SDB has repeatedly pointed out, and is an exposure of the corruption activities of the Aliyev family”, the document published by the Turan news agency emphasizes.

The Movement for Democracy and Prosperity in its statement also points out that “the identification of facts about the secret business of the Aliyev family will negatively affect the investment and corruption ratings of the country”: “All this increases the risks and threats for attracting foreign investment, which is very important in the territories liberated from occupation”, added the authors of the statement.

The organization led by Gubad Ibadoglu recalls that the SDB has repeatedly made proposals to combat corruption. For the last time, the movement presented to the Azerbaijani government a plan called “32 important steps to fight corruption”: “But the current government has not yet taken any effective steps towards combating corruption. To the contrary, it created conditions for the centralization of income from bribery and corruption, the creation of companies in offshore zones and the laundering of dirty money abroad, taken out of Azerbaijan in this way”.

The document notes the importance of financial reporting of senior and middle-ranking officials, from the president to the heads of district administrations, as well as prosecutors, judges, law enforcement officers.

“The CDB calls on the head of state, Ilham Aliyev, to respond to allegations of the corruption activities of his family, as well as to explain himself to the people. It also requires the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate the facts about the business of the head of state and his family, as reflected in the “Pandora Papers”, the document says.