Azerbaijan‘s government has denied reports that the ruling kleptocracy used a secret $2.9 billion slush fund for years to pay off European politicians and make luxury purchases, RFE/RL reports:
The report, published on September 4 by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), says thousands of payments were channeled through four shell companies in Britain between 2012 and 2014 to buy “silence.”…The report, The Azerbaijani Laundromat, found millions of dollars from the slush fund ended up in the accounts of companies and individuals across the globe. A collaborative effort between the OCCRP and several media outlets in Europe, Russia, and the United States, the report said the origin of the fund was unclear “but there is ample evidence of its connection to the family of President Ilham Aliyev.”
The OCCRP receives funding from Google and the National Endowment for Democracy.
