Ziya Mammadov in Center of Corruption Scandal

A trial of a Russian for bribing Azerbaijani officials starts in Sweden.

Arrested in the case of corruption deals with the Azerbaijani authorities, an employee of the Swedish branch of the Canadian transport company Bombardier, a Russian citizen Evgeny Pavlov will be brought to trial. This is reported by Reuters. According to the agency, the Swedish prosecutor's office brought charges against the suspect in the bribery of an official in Azerbaijan with the aim of obtaining a contract for $ 340 million for the company. The Stockholm District Court will start considering the case on August 21, and the hearings are scheduled for ten days.

The loud scandal, which mentions the names of a number of high-ranking Azerbaijani officials, broke out this spring with the filing of the international Organized Crime and Corruption Research Center (OCCRP), conducting a journalistic investigation based on the materials of the Panamanian dossier. In a solid dossier, the name of a London-based company called Multiserve Overseas, referring to offshore companies, is mentioned. It was closed several times for unprofitability, but then for some reason it again returned to business projects. OCCRP "pulled the string", which brought the authors to the participants of the scam with the sale of technical equipment of LLC Azerbaijan Railways for a large sum.

We are talking about the delivery of the Ebilock-950 signal system for Azerbaijani railways in the amount of 3 billion kronor (more than $ 333 million) in 2013, TASS said. The case also involved a private company of one of the Azerbaijani officials, which received contracts worth $ 56 million. The delivery was made directly to Azerbaijan, while on paper the Swedish "daughter" of Bombardier first sold equipment to the London-based company Multiserv Overseas, which then signed an agreement with Bombardier in Baku. The investigation concluded that under the first contract Multiserv Overseas paid the Bombardier structure 126 million kronor (about $ 14 million, $ 19 million according to OCCPR). For the delivered products, it received 941 million kronor ($ 104 million), and the margin was 550%. As it turned out, Multiserv Overseas has no office, no telephone number and no employees.

Swedish investigators are sure that Bombardier was directly involved in the drafting of tender documents, which won the tender, although it did not offer the lowest price. This is evidenced by the detected electronic correspondence of the main person involved in the scandal, Evgeny Pavlov, who was the coordinator and initiator of this collusion. As stated in one of his letters, "Azerbaijan Railways and local representatives of the World Bank are ready to compile the bidding documents so that Bombardier would fit all the conditions."

"Our partners ask us to keep our talks secret, so we need to keep this secret inside the company. In order to help the employees of the Azerbaijan Railways to draw up the "correct" tender documentation, I propose to create a group of employees whom we can trust," Pavlov noted.

As a result of multi-way dark transactions, the cost of supply for Azerbaijan grew fivefold, and other bidders who offered more favorable prices were rejected by Azerbaijani officials. Evidence of collusion is found in electronic correspondence, which was seized after a search in the office of Bombardier in Sweden.

The main negotiator on behalf of the Azerbaijani government was the former Minister of Transport Ziya Mammadov. His name is mentioned in the documents seized from the Swedish office of Bombardier during the searches. According to the investigation, Azerbaijani officials received bribes from the Swedish branch of the transport company in exchange for concluding contracts. The specific amount is also mentioned. According to Sveriges Radio, the amount of these bribes is approximately 700 million Swedish kronor ($ 77 million).

The Turan IA correspondent was not able to receive comments on these serious charges from the disgraced Minister. To the repeated calls on the mobile phone, a monotonous voice answered "number off". At the same time, his brother, Milli Majlis member Elton Mammadov assured the press that Ziya Muallim is in the country and has not gone anywhere.

Ziya Mammadov has something to hide and even to hide from justice for that. If the ex-Minister is summoned to the Stockholm District Court for testimony, he may be arrested. Moreover, in this case the names of other officials of Azerbaijan participating in the scam could emerge. After all, Ziya Mammadov probably had to share this $ 77 million with someone.

Bombardier Inc. is the world"s largest manufacturer of railway equipment Bombardier Transportation. The division of the company Bombardier Aerospace is engaged in the production of aircraft and space technology. -0--