Are the money of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) Elman Rustamov's personal wallet?

Baku/01.29.21/Turan: The Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) will build itself a new administrative building at its own expense, stated on Friday the chair of the board of the CBA Elman Rustamov. According to him, the CBA is not going to attract funds from the state budget. “The construction of the new building will take 4-5 years and will be carried out only at its own expense,” Rustamov said during an online press conference. This was his response to criticism of building a new extremely expensive building for the CBA. According to Rustamov, the CBA itself earns funds and can afford a luxurious building.

This position of Rustamov drew sharp criticism in the expert community. “The funds of the CBA are the same money of the state as the resources of the state budget and the Oil Fund. The CBA is not a commercial structure, and even a state-owned enterprise engaged in economic activities in order to build a building for itself at its expense.

The CBA is the state regulator of the banking system and its revenues come from the use of these powers. However, Rustamov argues as if the CBA's money is his personal funds and he can dispose of them, as he wants," Natig Jafarli, a member of the political council of the REAL party, economist, told Turan.

The CBA cannot independently make decisions on a project worth hundreds of millions of manats; the project itself is generally questionable.

Earlier, the Turkish Tekfen Holding through its subsidiary Tekfen Construction announced the signing of a contract for the construction of the administrative building of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan for 218 million euros (about 440 million manats). — 06D-