Khadija Ismayilova Invited to Testify in London Court

Baku / 10.01.20 / Turan: Journalist Khadija Ismayilova appealed to the Binagadi district court to temporarily lift her ban on foreign travel.

On January 10, a meeting was held in the Binagadi District Court, chaired by Judge Vugar Mammadov.

During the meeting, the journalist reported that the deputy of the Milli Majlis Javanshir Feyziyev filed a complaint with a London court in connection with the journalistic investigation of the “Azerbaijani Laundromat”, conducted by the OCCRP (Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime).

Ismayilova was summoned to the London court as a witness. In addition, the Riga Faculty of Journalism of the Stockholm School of Economics invited her to conduct courses.

For these reasons, Ismayilova asked the Binagadi court to temporarily allow her to leave the country.

“Javanshir Feyziyev is a citizen of Azerbaijan and deputy of Milli Majlis. However, he appealed not to the Azerbaijani court, but to the London court. The documents sent to me indicate that Feiziyev motivated the appeal to the court of London by the fact that he and his family members live there. How, then, does he carry out his parliamentary activities? ”Said Ismayilova.

According to her, in London it was originally supposed to hold a trial from January 15 to 30, but subsequently the process was postponed to February 11.

Judge Mammadov decided to postpone consideration of Ismayilova’s appeal to January 16.

The judge explained this by the need to submit to the court a notarized translation into Azerbaijani of the text of the invitation of Ismayilova.

The famous journalist Ismayilova was arrested in December 2014 and sentenced to 7.5 years in prison on charges of economic crimes. In May 2016, the Supreme Court replaced her real term by 3.5 years of probation with a trial period of five years.

In August 2016, the Baku Court of Appeal reduced the suspended sentence to 2 years and 3 months, leaving the trial period unchanged.

Note that according to media reports, Feiziyev is one of the founders of Avromed Company CJSC, which is the country's largest importer of pharmaceutical products.

On September 20, 2017, the OCCRP published an article “AvroMed could be the recipient of millions from the Laundromat.”

The authors of the investigation are Miranda Patruchich, Madina Mammadova and Ilgar Aga.

The article claims that in August 2013 AvroMed earned $ 138 million in revenue under the Laundromat scheme. The article said that the company was founded in 2010 with the participation of deputy Feiziyev, and it was alleged that he was close to the ruling elite of Azerbaijan. –03B06-