Taxpayers in Azerbaijan lost more than $600 million in a deal that made no sense for all involved except for a murky offshore deeply connected to President Ilham Aliyev.
A company close to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his family likely walked off with more than US$ 1 billion in a takeover of his country’s stake in Azercell Telecom, the largest mobile operator in the country. The process was aided by a subsidiary of TeliaSonera, the Swedish-Finnish telecom giant, which acted against its own interest to allow the deal to happen.
