«For a few days every day in the market at least $ 500 million was purchased, and if things went well, by the end of the year foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank could fall sharply," President Ilham Aliyev said in Mingechevir during his meeting with doctors on 24 February.
The same day, the Chairman of Azerbaijani Parliament at the plenary session of the Parliament said that a week before the 33% devaluation of the manat investors traded currency savings of 2 billion manat, and before that - 2.5 billion manat.
Analysis of the pre-devaluation period shows that the country's officials provide the public with false information and they also benefit from the "death" of the manat. The fact is that the head of state and chairman of the Central Bank almost until the last moment assured the public that the manat "is most stable currency and no devaluation is possible." Only two days before the announcement of the devaluation the CBA gave verbal permission to banks not to interfere with investors to exchange their manat deposits for dollars.
So who traded these billions of manat? The banks themselves did. The fact is that the majority of Azerbaijani banks belong to the official oligarchy. President Ilham Aliyev's family owns at least 7 banks. The same CBA Chairman Elman Rustamov informally owns one bank. With insider information that a sharp devaluation will be decided, they accelerated this process, exchanging their AZN assets for USD. Note that on Tuesday, Ilham Aliyev said that "some speculators and unscrupulous people have taken advantage of this situation to get an unreasonable profit." We are talking about unjust enrichment at the level of 34% in one day.
The assertion that "every day in the market at least $ 500 million was purchased" does not hold water. The fact is that in this case the government should accept the fact that the national economy was too dollarized. In addition, not in favor of the officials is the fact that before the Black Saturday there were not any queues at the banks. --08B-
Economics
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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has signed amendments to two presidential decrees, refining the roles and appointments of the State Customs Committee's representatives abroad, including in international organizations.
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Auditing organizations and independent auditors in Azerbaijan concluded 7,232 contracts valued at 133.2 million manats ($78.4 million) in 2023, reflecting increases of 20% in the number of contracts and 7.1% in their total value compared to the previous year, according to the Chamber of Auditors.
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The third meeting of the auction commission was held to evaluate the proposals submitted by participants in the auction for the Gobustan Solar Power Plant project, supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The meeting focused primarily on determining qualification eligibility and selecting the auction winner, according to the State Agency for Renewable Energy Sources.
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There is no sensationalism in the recent renaming of the Azerbaijani ship Karabakh to Mingachevir; the new name was given to the ship to ensure that two vessels would not operate under the same name, the Merchant Fleet of Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company (ASCO) CJSC told Turan.
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