Azerbaijani President Aliyev
Named Corruption's 'Person Of The Year'
A EurasiaNet Partner Post from: RFE/RL
In 2012, corruption watchdog Transparency International reported that
two-thirds of the world's countries may be considered "highly corrupt."
It would seem tough to choose someone for the dubious honor of
corruption's "person of the year."
One investigative-journalism NGO has done just that.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), based
in Sarajevo and Bucharest, has awarded the crown to Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev.
The group, which specializes in reporting on corruption in the region
stretching from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, also gave out some
"honorable" mentions. They went to alleged Kosovo-born cigarette and
drugs smuggler Naser Kelmendi, Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo
Djukanovic, Russian President Vladimir Putin, politically connected
Serbian entrepreneur Miroslav Miskovic, longtime Uzbek President Islam
Karimov, and wanted Serbian drugs smuggler Darko Saric.
The informal list was determined by representatives of the 15
international media organizations that make up the OCCRP. It is aimed at
highlighting the intrepid and often courageous reporting that is needed
to expose corruption in these notoriously opaque countries.
The OCCRP gave the nod to Aliyev, citing extensive reports and
"well-documented evidence" that "the Aliyev family has been
systematically grabbing shares of the most profitable businesses" in
Azerbaijan for many years.
Secret Ownership Stakes
The reports include secret ownership stakes in banks, construction
firms, gold mines, and telecommunications firms. Many of the reports
about Aliyev were investigated by OCCRP affiliate Khadija Ismayilova, a
journalist with RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.
"President Aliyev and his family, in fact, along with other persons
in his inner circle are involved in so many secret businesses that we
uncovered, actually together with Radio Free Europe this year," says
Paul Radu, OCCRP's executive director. "We identified hidden companies
that were owned by the first family of Azerbaijan in Panama, for
instance, or in the Czech Republic. And we identified assets that they
owned back in Azerbaijan via these companies."
Radu is optimistic about the new tools that are making this kind of
reporting more and more effective. One example he cites is that OCCRP
has successfully partnered with a Scottish computer hacker.
"He works right now with us at the Organized Crime and Corruption
Reporting Project and he is the one who scraped [eds: got into] the
Panamanian registry of companies and that allowed us to perform
name-based searches," Radu says. "And this is how we found the companies
that are owned by the daughters of Aliyev and by his wife in Panama."
However, Radu adds that the impact of such reporting in the case of the Aliyev family has not been what one might hope.
The ownership structures of the family's foreign assets have been
changed; the Azerbaijani parliament in June passed a law making it more
difficult to discover who actually owns commercial companies and
shielding Aliyev and his family from prosecution.
A Terrifying Campaign Of Threats
Moreover, journalist Ismayilova was subjected to a terrifying
campaign of threats and harassment that she alleges was orchestrated by
Aliyev's political allies.
Nevertheless, OCCRP editor Drew Sullivan says that "2012 was a banner
year for those of us who cover organized crime and corruption. It is a
growth industry around the world."
According to Radu, the OCCRP is now combining numerous international
databases and linking them to the organization's ongoing files of
"persons of interest" -- future candidates to unseat Aliyev as "person
of the year."
The OCCRP list is also intended to highlight the global impact of
crime and corruption. Radu maintains that most of the people on the
OCCRP list have dubious and opaque ties far beyond the borders of their
country.
"There are persons such as Darko Sadic, for instance, who is a
well-known drug trafficker," he says. "And these sorts of persons are
not well-known outside of the Balkans, but in fact they are part of
very, very large networks that stretch sometimes across continents. In
this case, this person was involved in cocaine trafficking from
Argentina all the way to the Balkans."
Radu adds that organized crime from the Balkans and the former Soviet
Union is deeply involved in the savage drug wars in Mexico and in
massive resource theft from impoverished countries in Africa. This makes
it all the more important to expose these people and the corrupt
schemes they exploit, he says.
