Operation "Oligarhgate" continues

Currently there are perhaps up to 20 people in the Department for combating organized crime, which cannot repay the loans to the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA)according to informed source close to the course of the investigation, commenting on the re-arrest of businessman Ibrahim Ibrahimov (Haji Ibrahim.)

According to the source, the detainees have commitments from $50 million to $340 million.

It is noteworthy that none of the employees of the IBA was detained, but the former head of the Dubai representative Adil Huseynov.

It is important to note that any bank grants loans to the respective pledge. However, no one can say that was the pledge under the above-mentioned loans, and if the pledge was, why it is not sold?

What is happening gives grounds to assume that there was a practice of issuing large loans in violation of all acceptable banking rules and regulations.  Do it and be imprisoned is possible only under one condition if the loans are issued at the direction of senior management.

On 15 July the Head of State issued a decree on the preparation for the privatization  the state share in the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA.)

The  Ministry of Finance was entrusted within 15 days to withdraw from the bank  bad loans, and transfer them to the balance of non-banking credit organization CJSC "Aqrarkredit." Then the credit institution will issue long-term bonds under the state guarantees.

It is also envisaged due to the limit of public debt in the state budget to restructure obligations on troubled assets of IBA.

Not later than 6 months must be prepared an action plan for the sale of the state share in the MBA, which is 50.2%.

In 2009, the rating agency Fitch called nearly one-third of all loans of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) in the category of problem. To date, the volume of bad loans in the interbank market was 27.8%. Of these, 18.6% are due and 9.2% are restructured loans.

However, the authorities did not make public a list of overdue and problem loans. According to unofficial information, the largest loan in the IBA took Ibrahim Ibrahimov – for  the construction of "Caspian Islands" and Nizami Piriyev - for the construction of a methanol plant. Piriyev has built a plant worth several hundred million dollars, but Ibrahimov built nothing. According to unofficial data, in both cases the talk is about loans of hundreds of millions of dollars.

However, both oligarchs claim that their loans are not overdue and the amount of loans themselves are much smaller. -03/02В-