The court, the police, the prosecutor's office – whose themis will prevail

A strange picture is emerging in the law enforcement agencies of the Khatai district. The court, the police and the prosecutor's office have not been able to come to a consensus for several years regarding the entrepreneur's complaint against the owners of the “Azur” shopping center.

The essence of the matter briefly boils down to the fact that entrepreneur Anar Garibov rented a large area here, made expensive repairs, brought expensive equipment and a large assortment of branded clothing items. But after the renovation, the premises attracted the landlords themselves. Less than two months later, the owners of “Azur” announced to him a multiple increase in rent, which contradicted the terms of the contract concluded between the parties.

The entrepreneur, who, according to him, invested about a million manats in the repair and equipping of a shopping facility, could not accept the new conditions. And not only because it contradicted the document legally supported by the parties. He had just started to establish trade, pay off loans, and now he could not pay the unjustified amounts taken from the ceiling. And in general, no self-respecting person could agree with such a campaign, more like an open robbery.

The conflict could not be settled amicably. Landlords began to resort to the dirtiest methods to force the entrepreneur to agree to their terms or simply leave the mall. The lights were turned off, the store was flooded with sewage water, billboards were eliminated, obstacles were created for store employees, while they were not allowed to take out the goods, they began to reconstruct the object for themselves. And one day, when he came to work, the entrepreneur did not recognize his store - all the equipment, along with the clothes hanging on it, disappeared. He did not find an answer to his question: who did it and where all his property is.

I had to file a complaint with law enforcement agencies. I thought they would quickly put things in order here, everything is so obvious that you will not have to look for much. It is clear that such an open robbery could not be arranged without the consent of the management of the shopping center. But... I miscalculated a lot. Five times, law enforcement agencies launched an investigation and refused to file a lawsuit. The Khatai district Court, which gave a legal assessment of this case, sees clear violations of the Criminal Code in part 158.3, 177.2.3, 177.2.4, 186.3, 190.2, but…

It seemed that the decision of Judge Bakhtiyar Mammadov to annul the decision on refusal to initiate criminal proceedings made earlier by the investigator of the Khatai regional department Ruslan Sadygov would help to solve the problem at the root. But it was not there. The prosecutor's office again refused a corresponding letter signed by the head of the Khatai  district department with a request to initiate a criminal case.

It is not entirely clear,  why the refusal of the Khatai Prosecutor's Office to initiate a criminal case is also supported by higher supervisory bodies – the Baku Prosecutor's Office and the country's Geo-Prosecutor's Office. And not because there was at least something really in favor of the landlords in the case. Maybe the honor of the uniform is more important to them than the truth they are called to protect. After all, it is clear to any person that without a court decision, no one has the right not only to take away in an unknown direction and hide someone else's property somewhere for months - moreover, without the knowledge of the owner. And the property found after a long and persistent search also partially rotted due to improper storage conditions, and partially disappeared altogether.

However, landlords today claim that they repeatedly warned the tenant to get out of here, and the process of secret transportation was conducted with witnesses – their employees - and filmed. But at that time the case was already being considered in court, which had strictly warned the owners of the shopping center before that, so that they would not touch anything in this store until the end of the trial. Maybe, for this reason, they did not invite court executors to the eviction of an undesirable entrepreneur, unprecedented in all respects, without whom no such case is solved.

You can build different versions, put forward all sorts of assumptions. But when you find out that one of the owners of the shopping center Fuad Rzayev is the son of one of the last oligarchs in the country - the president of “Azerenergy” Baba Rzayev, such a desire disappears. And this factor, it is possible, outweighs all the arguments of the court, the police, and the prosecutor's office.

By the way, the court decision clearly defines that the owner of the premises Fuad Rzayev is obliged to give testimony, but which is absolutely illegal, his representative Akhundova writes an explanatory note instead of him, which is a gross violation of the requirements of criminal procedure legislation,  says the well-known lawyer, Akram Hasanov. According to Article 9.4.1 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), a witness is obliged to give evidence himself without intermediaries, on the basis of the  Article 105 of the CPC, a witness's representative can provide a witness with only legal advice during testimony. The prosecutor's office exercising procedural supervision, oddly enough, did not see a gross violation of the CPC.

In particular, the court found a violation of one of the tasks of criminal proceedings: rapid detection of crimes, comprehensive, complete, and objective clarification of all circumstances related to criminal prosecution. Law enforcement agencies, having received a report on acts reflecting the signs of a committed crime, are obliged to take measures to preserve and remove traces of the crime, as well as immediately conduct an inquiry or investigation.

Lawyer Akram Hasanov, agreeing with the position of the court, also noted the following in an interview with us. Inaction of law enforcement agencies in itself can qualify as a crime. After all, the law requires immediate action for a reason. Over time, it is much more difficult to identify evidence and bring criminals to justice. This raises questions also because such behavior is unusual for Azerbaijani law enforcement officers. They are in a hurry to open criminal cases even on complaints from neighbors against each other for all sorts of trivial reasons. And here there is a whole bunch of crimes in accordance with the following articles of the Criminal Code: 158 (violation of the inviolability of premises of legal entities), 177 (theft), 186 (intentional destruction or damage to property), 190 (obstruction of legitimate business activity), 308 (abuse of official authority), 309 (abuse of official authority), 322 (arbitrariness). And this is at a time when the head of state constantly calls for protecting businessmen. With this approach, there will simply be no non-innocent business doomed to failure in the country.

It would seem that the law is equal for everyone, especially for law enforcement agencies. But it seems that in the Khatai district each organ has its own themis. It is time to clarify this matter; after all, themis should be the same for everyone.

Previous articles about this trial:

• The trial on the suit of a businessman claiming more than a million bankruptcy through the fault of the “Azure” shopping center
• Baku Court of Appeal forbade the press to observe process of  "FB-Company" lawsuit against "Azur Shopping Center"Social 
• The trial on the suit of a businessman claiming more than a million bankruptcy through the fault of the “Azure” shopping center
• Who is behind the contradictory statements of the Court of Appeal?