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.

The Azerbaijan Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Afgan Mukhtarli, the journalist who disappeared from a Tbilisi street in May of 2017 and reappeared two days later in a Baku courtroom.

Through opaque contracts, an Azerbaijani cargo airline once linked to the ruling Aliyev family has an impressive range of business partners — including the US military.

A SilkWay Airlines Boeing-737 leaves Hong Kong in 1999. Credit: Wilco 

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.