A court in Milansentenced on Monday former Italian deputy and member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Luca Volontè, to four years in prison for taking bribes from Azerbaijani politicians to help mute the Europe’s criticism of Baku’s human rights record.

The United Kingdom’s highest court has dismissed an application by the wife of a jailed Azerbaijani banker against a legal order requiring her to disclose how she acquired two high-value properties in the country.

After a Turkish conglomerate won a major contract to build a dam in Azerbaijan, a mysterious $3 million was sent to an offshore firm — which then bought the luxurious London flat where an Azeri official’s son was living.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevstripped on Monday the country’s ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia,Eldar Hasanov, of his post after authorities arrested the former diplomat last week in Baku, accusing him of embezzlement of budget funds.

Frustration among Azeris has been growing for some time over the forced contributions to the national coronavirus relief fund and payouts of a meagre US$110 for those who have lost their livelihood during the pandemic, but exploded on last week when they heard the government had given half a million dollars to newly-established companies to fund religious events.

A new project that will be led byEuropol and financed by the European Commission will help the EU’s eastern neighbours -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine -- fight organized crime.

A landmark labor exploitation case against Azerbaijan should soon be decided by the European Court of Human Rights — more than ten years after it took place. The workers’ story would have been forgotten if not for the efforts of dedicated human rights advocates.

The family of Azerbaijan’s former security chief has built up a business and property empire in Europe worth over 100 million euros

Credit: Svetlana Tiourina

Few authoritarian states have worked harder than Azerbaijan to leverage major international events to boost their image on the world stage.

After a wave of arrests targeting members of opposition parties and activists, human rights groups have accused Azerbaijan of using the coronavirus crisis as an excuse to harass the opposition.

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.