OCCRP - Aliyev Family Earned from Devaluation of AZN

The Research Center for Corruption and Organized Crime (OCCRP) says the family of President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev earned tens of millions of USD from the devaluation of the manat in 2015. The publication by OCCRP says that Aliyev's family, as well as a businessman close to them received at least $ 64 million profit from the transaction, which took place a few days or weeks before the devaluation of the manat in 2015.

In February 2015 Azerbaijan Central Bank devalued the national currency against the dollar by about a third, and moved to a floating exchange rate, resulting in manat depreciating by another 50% in one day in December 2015. OCCRP notes that only a few days before the first devaluation Aliyev himself, as well as representatives of the Central Bank assured the population that the national currency will remain stable. Investigative journalists are wondering if Aliyev could have known about the impending devaluation and if he could report it to his relatives or business partner, so that they protected their assets and even earned from the crisis.

Attention of the journalists was attracted by the transactions that were carried out by three banks - Caspian Development Bank, Ata Bank and Pasha Bank. The owners of these banks, according to OCCRP, are close to the Aliyev family businessman Ashraf Kamilov and / or Aliyev family themselves. Caspian Development Bank and Ata Bank are associated with the conglomerate Synergy Group, 99% owned by Kamilov and Pasha Bank is controlled by the daughters of the President of Azerbaijan.

According to OCCRP, at the end of January 2015 Caspian Development Bank, which had been recently taken over by Synergy Group, provided the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) a dollar-denominated loan of $ 52 million. The loan was granted for five years at 6% per annum. OCCRP argues that such credit conditions raise questions. For example, the amount of the loan exceeds 80% of the authorized capital of the bank that OCCRP calls "striking violation of the banking regulations of Azerbaijan." The loan rate was higher than that available at the time for SOCAR in the international market. Only this transaction, thanks to the manat devaluation, brought Caspian Development Bank a profit of 13 million manat ($ 12.5 million). And after at the end of 2015 the manat depreciated for the second time during the year, the profit of the credit increased to 39.2 million manat ($ 25.4 million).

Another suspicious transaction, according OCCRP, also took place a few days before the devaluation of the manat. AAC LLC included in Synergy Group, engaged in the manufacture of building materials, returned 60 million manat ($ 76.5 million), which was due to Ata Bank, and once again took a debt slightly higher in USD from the bank. The owners of Ata Bank at least at the end of 2014 were Kamilov and the company of the Azerbaijan President's son Heydar. Immediately after the devaluation the deal brought AAC around AZN 20 million ($ 19.3 million). In turn, Ata Bank due to this scheme earned 61 million manats, according to OCCRP.

OCCRP also indicates the financial results for 2015 in another bank - Pasha Bank. The bank was founded by the First Lady of Azerbaijan Mehriban Aliyeva, is now its beneficiaries are the daughters of the President Arzu and Leyla. In 2015, the bank's income from foreign currency transactions and exchange differences amounted to 35.9 million manats (about $ 28 million) - six times more than in the previous year. But the bank did not report on specific transactions, so it is difficult to say in what circumstances it received the profits.

As OCCRP notes, the entire banking sector of Azerbaijan as a result of the devaluation and the following transition to a floating AZN exchange rate in a few months lost "more than a billion dollars."

The Ilham Aliyev family has become a defendant in a journalistic investigation in early April. Journalists of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), possessing documents of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, said that Aliyev's daughters, Arzu and Leyla control 56% of the consortium of six gold mining companies. At the same time in 2006, the Azerbaijani authorities entered into a secret agreement, according to which 70% of the profits of the companies belonging to the daughters of the President came to them, and only 30% - to the state.    -02D-