The State Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture Awards Projects to the Head of the Oversight Body

The architectural company El & En has received several contracts worth a total of AZN 805,593 from the Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture. Additionally, the Territorial Construction Planning Center commissioned projects from the private company El & En worth several hundred thousand manats. These architectural projects involve work in liberated territories and other regions of Azerbaijan. The co-owner of this company, along with his son, is Elbay Gasimzade, the head of the Public Council under the State Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture and simultaneously the Chairman of the Union of Architects.

Architect and professor Elchin T. Aliyev, who disclosed this on Facebook, drew attention to the fact that the chairman of the Public Council of the Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture and the recipient of these contracts is the same individual, pointing to a clear conflict of interest between the private company and the state agency.

“He received contracts from a state body that he is supposed to oversee, according to the vision of the country’s president. Over the past three years alone, Gasimzade has secured contracts worth a total of AZN 1,360,093 from state organizations overseeing restoration work in Karabakh.

The purpose of the Law on Public Councils, adopted in 2014, was to increase the transparency of state agencies, ensure public participation in governance, and protect the interests of society. However, today, Public Councils—comprising members who are financially dependent on the state bodies they are meant to oversee—are used to legitimize decisions made by state agencies rather than functioning as mechanisms for public oversight,” Aliyev noted.

Following his Facebook post about this matter some time ago, another state body, the Service for Antimonopoly Control and Consumer Market Supervision, which manages the website www.etender.gov.az, removed all information about the company El & En, according to Aliyev.

He further claims that after 12 years of Gasimzade’s leadership of the Union of Architects, the field of architecture in the country has been devastated by rampant corruption. As a result, no independent architectural companies with more than a few employees remain. The market is dominated by large entities created by officials holding positions as the Chairman of the Union of Architects, heads of the State Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture, and directors of project institutes.

Turan reached out to the Union of Architects of Azerbaijan to obtain Gasimzade’s opinion regarding Aliyev’s critical publication. A committee staff member promised to relay the agency’s request to the chairman, but as of January 10, a phone conversation with the head of the Union had not taken place.

Source: Elchin T. Aliyev’s Facebook post.