Early Tuesday morning Azerbaijani authoritiesdetained Sevinj Vaqifqizi, the editor-in-chief of Abzas Media, at Baku airport as she was returning to the country. The previous day, Abzas director Ulvi Hasanli had been detained on the same charge of smuggling foreign currency.

On Monday, Azerbaijani authorities detained Ulvi Hansanli, the head of the independent news siteAbzas Media, on unspecified charges.

Azerbaijani authorities placed an opposition leader intopre-trial detention on Monday for counterfeiting and for being allied with the exiled Turkish cleric Fetullah Gullen, whom Ankara has blamed for plotting the 2016 coup.

An Azerbaijani courtsent a former lawmaker to pre-trial detention for four months on Wednesday after state media accused him of coordinating environmental protests in a village 450 kilometers away from Baku, the country’s capital where he lives.

While sitting on the U.K. Parliament’s defense committee, Conservative Party MP Bob Stewart failed to disclose his directorship at a foreign defense company owned by a controversial Azerbaijani businessman, a new investigation published on Wednesday shows.

Rza and Seymur Talibov, sons of the longtime ruler of Azerbaijan’s isolated Nakhchivan region, transferred ownership of properties worth tens of millions of dollars after their father resigned under pressure from Baku, property records show.

Aninvestigation published on Thursday revealed that the mobile phones of at least 12 Armenian public figures and officials, including journalists and human rights defenders, were infected with the cutting-edge spyware Pegasus during the country's war with Azerbaijan.

Revealing photographs of journalists and activists are proliferating on social media. Many Azerbaijanis, and the women themselves, suspect they were planted by the country’s authoritarian government as revenge against speaking out. The government denies the claims.

Narmin Shahmarzade (front right), a women’s rights activist, protesting against the political use of revenge porn. (Photo: Meydan TV)

A Telegram channel began publishing the private Facebook messages and photos of Azerbaijani opposition activist Bakhtiyar Hajiyev on Friday, a week after heannounced he would no longer drink water as part of his ongoing hunger strike in protest against his detention.

Until last year, Rovnag Abdullayev headed Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, where he made a modest official salary. Yet his son Rashad purchased an ultra-expensive property in London’s Grosvenor Square at the age of 25.

Turkish businessman Emin Uchar has made a fortune in Nakhchivan, an autonomous Azerbaijani territory between Iran, Turkey, and Armenia. New documents and interviews provide evidence he may have acted as a proxy for the family of autocrat Vasif Talibov, who ruled Nakhchivan for 27 years before resigning on December 21.

The Czech policeannounced on Tuesday that they have arrested a high-ranking mafia member wanted in the United States for “serious violent crimes.” Media identified the man as a Georgia-born Azeri who was involved in murders and kidnappings.

The strongman who ruled Azerbaijan’s remote region of Nakhchivan with an iron fist for the past 27 years resigned abruptly on Wednesday, marking the end of his autocratic and often brutal rule over the secretive exclave.

Azerbaijan’s State Security Servicearrested two high-ranking officials on Nov. 23 on charges of embezzling more than US$160 million.

Azerbaijani authoritiesarrested on Sunday the editor of an independent outlet and a lawyer known for defending journalists, activists and political prisoners, accusing them of bribery. Both have denied the allegations but will remain detained during a four-months-long investigation period.

A former high-ranking official of the Georgian State Security Service accused the former prime minister of personally ordering the 2017 abduction of an Azeri journalist who was then forcefully taken to neighboring Azerbaijan where a court sentenced him to prison in a trial that was seen as unfair.

An unknown man threatened a prominent Azerbaijani journalist with a knife and ordered her to stop reporting about a controversial murder trial she had been covering.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev appointed the chairman of a bank owned by his family members as the new governor to the country’s Central Bank. Opposition leaders see the move as Aliyev’s complete takeover of the country’s banking system.

Land registry documents show that an Azeri lawmaker purchased two luxury London homes for 26.5 million pounds (US$34.5 million) — even as U.K. authorities were investigating whether some of the money he had transferred to his family’s local bank accounts was linked to money laundering.

Leaked documents show two Azerbaijan state companies were set to siphon off $1.7 billion from Shah Deniz 2, which feeds the Southern Gas Corridor to Europe.