Центр по исследованию коррупции и организованной преступности

Thirteen members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) have been thrown out of the organization for accepting gifts and bribes from the Azerbaijani government while a 14th can continue to serve, according to a report released by theRules of Procedure Committee on Friday.

The Supreme Court of Azerbaijan upheld the two-year prison sentence of an anti-corruption blogger who was convicted of libel after alleging police officers beat him and demanded he stop his anti-corruption advocacy, Radio Free Europe reported earlier this week.

Dr. Mirjalal Kazimi, a liver transplant specialist, is famous in Azerbaijan.

Patients start gathering outside his office at the Central Hospital of Oilmen in the country’s capital, Baku, before 10 am.

Dr. Mirjalal Kazimi, an Azerbaijani doctor who specializes in transplant operations. Both of his patients in Georgia died one week after surgery. (Photo credit is anonymous for Azerbaijani reporters’ security)

Wearing black T-shirts and hoods with slogans "#Afgan" and "No Investigations Means No Cooperation," about 30 friends and human rights activists demonstrated in front of the former Parliament building on the first anniversary of the day Afgan Mukhtarli disappeared from the streets of Tbilisi.

A purportedly private Azerbaijani organization paid over a million and a half dollars to a US firm to lobby for the country in Washington. That organization was secretly funded by the Azerbaijani Laundromat.

A quarter-million dollars from the Azerbaijani Laundromat went to a US energy consultant of Azerbaijani origin who, for years, has lobbied in the interests of his native country in the halls of Congress.

Members of the Council of Europe, CoE, have demanded sanctions against colleagues who have been accused of taking bribes from Azerbaijan to silence discussion on the country’s human rights record, the New York Times reported Sunday.

Azerbaijan's state energy company won an opaque contract to sell gas to Malta. Documents obtained by investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia before her death indicate that the island's taxpayers could be overpaying by tens of millions of dollars a year.

An LNG tanker moored off the village of Marsaxlokk, location of the recently constructed Delimara Power Station, which runs on natural gas. Credit: Reuters

Afgan Mukhtarli, the Azerbaijan journalist who disappeared from Tbilisi last May, only to reappear in a Baku prison, had his appeal denied in an Azerbaijan court on Tuesday.

Over the last three years, two top families in Azerbaijan’s ruling elite used dozens of secret accounts in Malta’s private Pilatus Bank to transfer cash into Europe and funnel millions of dollars into investments in luxury property, hotels, and businesses.

The flag of Pilatus Bank flies from its offices in Whitehall Mansions in Ta’ Xbiex, Malta. Photo (c): REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi

TeliaSonera and Turkcell sold their stakes in an Azerbaijani mobile operator presumed to have been dubiously privatized by President Ilham Aliyev’s family which may have earned as much as US$ 1 billion from the corrupt deal.

The border guard who accused an Azerbaijani journalist of assaulting him while illegally crossing the border from Georgia failed to appear on Friday  at an Appeals Court hearing in Shaki.

More than a month into the controversial trial of journalist Afgan Mukhtarli, the Azerbaijan court denied his request to attend the funeral of his sister and her two children and be released to house arrest so he could better deal with his loss.

The Kiton store in Vienna’s Golden Quarter.

A key player in the Azerbaijani Laundromat -- a slush fund and money-laundering scandal that has already led to the resignation of members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe -- has gained a foothold in Vienna’s “Golden Quarter.”

An Azerbaijani journalist who disappeared in May off the streets near his home in Tbilisi, Georgia, and was next seen in custody in his native Azerbaijan, was put on trial Thursday for allegedly crossing the border illegally, carrying € 10,000 in undeclared currency, and resisting border guards, iFact.ge reported.

The head of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation pressed Azerbaijan on Friday to withdraw its travel ban on Khadija Ismayilova and allow the investigative journalist to travel to Sweden and receive her reward.

Khadija Ismayilova is an investigative journalist with Radio Free Europe and OCCRP. She responds to UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova’s letter to the Guardian about UNESCO’s relationship with her country’s repressive government.  Ismayilova spent 18 months in an Azerbaijani jail for her reporting about the ruling Aliyev family of Azerbaijan.

Khadija Ismayilova (Photo by  Aziz Karimov)

Only two days after she received the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” Azerbaijani investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova was on Thursday presented the prestigious2017 Allard Prize for International Integrity.

A member of the German parliament and close ally of Angela Merkel received payments from Azerbaijan through a firm that lobbied for the regime’s better image, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Tuesday. 

The European Parliament called for tighter anti-corruption measures on Wednesday and for an investigation into reports that Azerbaijan paid off EU decision-makers who spoke favorably about the country’s dismal human rights record.