An Azerbaijani journalist was released on Tuesday after having served two of the six years he was sentenced to by a Baku court despite criticism from human rights organizations which claimed the charges were baseless.

Azerbaijan authorities have detained five people, including the husband of the director of one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies, for trying to smuggle face masks to China as fears about the coronavirus pandemic spike.

The 2014 arrest and pre-trial detention of Azerbaijani journalist and OCCRP contributor Khadija Ismayilova was unlawful and politically motivated, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday. 

Police raided homes and offices of money laundering suspects across Germany and Belgium Thursday in an attempt to track a money trail flowing from anAzerbaijani laundromat operation to shell companies in the Baltic, the FrankfurtProsecutor’s Office confirmed.

The Estonian Prosecutor's Office confirmed on Thursday it expanded the investigation into money laundering through Danske bank’s Estonian branch from two to more than 10 cases that are involving suspicious transactions worth US$ 2 billion.

A group of young Azerbaijani men spent two million euros (US$2.2 million) on a 19-day-vacation on Mykonos, one of the most expensive islands in Greece. The big spenders are children of Azeris linked to the country’s gas companies, according to Greece's SKAI TV channel.

An Azerbaijani lawmaker resigned on Monday after avideo surfaced last week that showed him trying to repay a US$300,000 personal loan he took from a woman by offering her a government-owned house instead.

Authorities detained the son of a lawmaker and five of his relatives for getting into a fight with tax inspectors who came to see why the recreational centre the son was running in the south of Azerbaijan has suddenly drastically reduced its tax contributions.

A $1.35 million watch was stolen from the son of an Azerbaijani official. First they denied it happened at all. Now they’re denying the watch was his. But the new story doesn’t add up either.

A 22 year-old Azeri allegedly reported the theft of his US$1.2 million watch to the Spanish police at the island of Ibiza where he was vacationing with his friend, Diario de Ibiza reported on Wednesday.

Using over a dozen credit cards in the name of her imprisoned husband, her bodyguard and her driver, Zamira Hajiyeva, blew across Europe nearly 20 million dollars of money she and her husband embezzled from the Azerbaijani national bank, media reported on Monday.  

Traditionally without explaining why, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev reshuffled the country’s cabinet on Thursday, rotating various ministers and their deputies and even appointing one as minister of a ministry he dissolved in January.

A Canadian manufacturing giant allegedly paid millions of dollars of bribes to win a contract in Azerbaijan--and then obstructed a World Bank investigation into its wrongdoing, according to internal World Bank documents obtained by the Globe and Mail last week.

The son of Azerbaijan’s president has a previously undiscovered property near Moscow worth tens of millions of dollars.

A German MP is the first person to face political consequences in her home country for involvement in the Azerbaijani Laundromat, a US$2.9 billion influence peddling scandal between Azeri government and more than a dozen European politicians.

Recent charges against Mehman Huseynov that claimed he attacked a prison guard were dropped on Tuesday, a day after the anti-corruption blogger sent a direct appeal to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.

Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova ended her five-day hunger strike on Saturday after thousands of protesters rallied to demand the release of political prisoners from Azerbaijan’s prisons.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday that the Azerbaijan government had violated freedom of expression laws and that it had failed to investigate breaches of privacy in the case of investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova.

Imprisoned Azerbaijani blogger and photographer Mehman Huseynov, whose most recent work was about President Ilham Aliyev naming his wife as the country’s vice president, was in deteriorating health Tuesday, 13 days after going on a hunger strike.

The UK’s first target under the new anti-corruption law is Zamira Hajiyeva, 55, who owns a US$15 million home in London and spent $20 million on shopping at Harrods, British media reported Wednesday.