Turan IA Urges Court to Give Legal Assessment of Illegal Actions of JSC Azersu

The court session on the lawsuit of the news agency Turan against the state water distribution company JSC Azersu was held in Baku Administrative-Economic Court №1 chaired by Sharafat Mammadova on November 28.

 The Court considered the claim of the agency in connection with the lack of response on the part of Azersu to an information request on August 30, 2016 on the fate of the execution of the order of Azerbaijan’s President from March 29, 2016 "On provision of water measuring devices to the population." According to the order, AZN 12 million was allocated to purchase and install water meters.

The request for information includes 7 questions about the time of the ad, the tender for the purchase of the counters, the conditions, the winner of the tender, the price, the volume and delivery deadlines for the winner, the price of meters (mechanical and smart), installation costs with indicating the work, the material and the costs.

The representative of Azersu at the trial said that only the day before he received the statement of claim and is not familiar with the case. He asked for time to study the request from Turan IA. However, the Director of the agency Mehman Aliyev pointed out that there was plenty of time for the answer both before and after filing a lawsuit on November 15 this year.

Earlier, the court was postponed twice: the first time due to Aliyev’s absence in the country on 3 November and again on 18 November, when the agency did not receive any notice of the meeting. Oddly, the court notice of the hearing on November 18 was sent to the local post office on November 19 and received by the agency only on 22 November. The court states that it submitted the notification to the post office on November 10 under the register 387. It should be noted that until 18 November Aliyev sent two e-mails to the court with questions about the date of the hearing, but got only the answer that the e-mail was registered.

At trial, Aliyev called on the judge to give a legal assessment on the fact of failure to submit information to apply Articles 374, 382 of the Code on administrative violations with a fine collection of maximum 1,500 manat to Azersu for failure to provide a response. "For this there is a good reason," said Aliyev, noting that the laws "On mass media", "On Freedom of Information", "On Combating Corruption" (articles 9.3.12) were violated.

The judge Mammadova noted that the offense has not yet been determined and the court cannot make any decision. It has provided to the representative of Azersu time until 9 December, that is, until the next court hearing, to provide answers to the questions posed in the information request.

Aliyev, in turn, asked Azersu to reply to the questions before the next court session, as time may take up to three hours for a response.

As is known, in 2006, on behalf of President Ilham Aliyev, Azersu declared a state program on the installation of water meters until the end of 2008. Later the head of state asked to complete the process in 2007. After 10 years, the program is made only by 60%, which does not draw the right conclusions about the volume of water consumed in the country and for this purpose the costs are financed by the subscribers, the state and foreign loans.    -01C--