Head of Nakhchivan town planning committee arrested

Baku/14.12.22/Turan: Sabail district court of Baku on the eve of the presentation of the State Security Service arrested the head of the committee for town planning of Nakhchivan, Hijran Rustamov.

The official is accused of embezzling more than 212 million manats of state funds intended for construction and improvement in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.

This is the third high-ranking Nakhchivan official who has been arrested in the course of an investigation carried out by the State Security Service of Azerbaijan. Previously, the Finance Minister was arrested for the embezzlement of 144 million manats and the deputy chief of customs for the embezzlement of 132 million manats.

According to unofficial data, dozens of people from various departments of Nakhchivan were arrested.

It ought to be noted that such a scale of embezzlement - 488 million manats (about $287 million) and embezzlement never happened in any other case of arrests of state officials of the country. There is no doubt that some official could have been embezzling such sums on his own for years. The defeat of the Nakhichevan clan was due to the fact that the embezzlement was centralised and systematic.  

According to the investigation, the embezzlement had been going on for many years, but for some reason went unnoticed in Baku. The reason for this is that the head of Nakhchivan, Vasif Talibov, was considered untouchable as a person close to the family of the head of state. -02D-