The relatives and entourage of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev bought property worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Great Britain. Do they still monitor them? Despite reforms in the field of transparency, this information is still not available due to the special conditions of offshore trusts, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Coverage Project (OCCRP).
The latest data revealed that Aliyev's daughters own six luxurious apartments in London. But the current ownership of the 10 properties purchased for $160 million remains unknown because they have been transferred to offshore trusts, which are currently exempt from public scrutiny.
"A hotel building next to the British Museum, penthouses within walking distance of Hyde Park, a mansion overlooking the green spaces of Hampstead Heath and much more," the OCCRP notes.
In 2021, OCCRP revealed that a collection of London properties worth almost $700 million was acquired by Ilham Aliyev's family and cronies, turning two decades of undisputed political power into enormous wealth, and decided to spend their money in one of the financial centers of the democratic world.
To hide their involvement in real estate, they registered it under the names of dozens of offshore companies. The assets could only be linked to the Aliyevs thanks to leaks from the "Pandora Archive" of offshore jurisdictions in the hands of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
