Today, December 24, the birthday is celebrated by President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. According to Rucriminal.info sources, his mood is not very good. And the culprit of this is the top manager of the Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR Turab Musayev. He became a defendant in the case of one of the most high-profile European crimes - the murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Galicia. And then multimillion-dollar corruption schemes were opened with the participation of representatives of the ruling elite of Azerbaijan and members of the family of President Ilham Aliyev. (The latter, by the way, from 1994 to August 2003 was the vice president, and then the first vice president of SOCAR). Investigating these schemes, and Daphne Galicia died.

Over the top of Azerbaijan, Turab Musaev and his brother Talekh, "clouds are gathering" every day. Recently, the family of Daphne Galicia appealed to Europol with the request to provide the necessary support for the investigation, which is trying to trace the shadow money path between Malta, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates. Already “surfaced” documents that the services of this “laundry” were used by members of the ruling elite of Azerbaijan and members of the family of President Ilham Aliyev. These are the leaders of the Azerbaijani oil state corporation SOCAR, the Minister of Emergency Situations Kamaladdin Heydarov, the deputy foreign minister Araz Azimov and other senior officials, as well as the president’s daughter - Leila and Arzu Aliyeva. Through this "laundry" were also laundered funds stolen from the budget of Malta.

The investigation of all these frauds was carried out by Daphne Galicia. And on October 16, 2017, an explosion occurred in Malta. The bomb was planted under the car of Daphne Galicia. The killing was preceded by numerous telephone threats. And in November 2019, detentions and arrests in the Galicia case began in Malta.

On November 30, local tycoon Jorgen Fenech was taken into custody on charges of complicity in the murder.

Fenech had a gas consortium with the Azerbaijani state-owned company SOCAR. Under contracts organized by Fenech and Socar, Malta received gas at a weird price - 40% higher than the market. Malta has already lost more than a billion dollars.

 

The consortium is credited with not only “schematosis” with Azerbaijani gas, but also stories of the resale of British liquefied gas to Malta, as well as financial manipulations that turned the island state into a “laundry” for Azerbaijani capital to be withdrawn from the country.

In Europe, they are directly talking about involvement in the combinations of Electrogas director Turab Musaev. He not only provided communication between the Maltese and Azerbaijani parties, but, together with his brother Taleh, was a beneficiary of illegal activities in Malta.

The essence of the deal between Azerbaijan and Malta

In 2013, the Government of Malta announced a tender for the construction of a power plant on the island and its further provision of liquefied natural gas.

The tender was won by Elektrogaz, a third of which belongs to the Azerbaijani state-owned enterprise Socar.

Then, in 2015, Elektrogaz signed a contract for the supply of liquefied natural gas with the same SOKAR.

In 2017, deliveries began: and Malta buys gas at prices well above market prices.

As the Guardian found out, the scheme worked like this:

1. SOKAR purchased about 113 million dollars of gas from Shell.

2. SOKAR sold all this gas to Electrogas Malta, but at a price of about $ 153 million. And he made a profit of $ 40 million.

3 Electrogas Malta sells the same gas to Maltese company Enemalta at the same price. Then Enemalta - with Elektrogaz - turns gas into electricity.

Gas is transported in a liquefied form. Azerbaijan has huge reserves of oil and gas, but it does not produce liquefied gas. SOCAR has no experience in the production or trading of liquefied gas.

SOCAR interests in Electrogas board are represented by Azerbaijani Turab Musaev, who is also the director of the LNG and business development departments at SOCAR itself, and he is also an employee of its Swiss subsidiary, SOCAR Trading. According to Times of Malta journalist Ivan Martin, the mediator of the murder of Daphne Galicia Teuma said that shortly before the crime, Jorgen Fenech met and talked for a long time with “a certain Turab”. The reporter does not doubt that it was Turab Musaev and cited a piece of electronic correspondence on Twitter in which Musaev actually coordinates the actions of the Government of Malta to “solve problems” of the state-owned energy company Enemalta. Characteristically, the letter begins with the words “This morning, I and Jorgen <Fenech> talked with Conrad Mizzi ...” - that is, two suspects of involvement in the murder of a journalist were mentioned at once. Well, of course, one cannot fail to note the fact that an Azerbaijani citizen representing the interests of SOCAR, together with a local businessman, decides the fate of Malta’s “national heritage”.

In close business connection with Turab Musaev, his brother Talekh Musaev works.

In particular, the brothers jointly own a blocking stake in Savannah Petroleum, a British oil and gas company in Africa: Taleh through Aralia Capital S.A. and Peleng Holding Corporation, SOCAR Trading - through Luzon Investments S.A.

The management structure of SOCAR Trading is generally a kind of tracing-paper from the Azerbaijan leadership system, where everything is tied exclusively to kinship and clan relations. Turab Musaev formally works as the deputy of Khayyal Akhmedzade, 42-year-old vice president of business development. In turn, Taleh Musaev was connected with Khayal Akhmedzade through the management of STL Oil and Gas SA, as stated on the official website of the Office of Registration of Legal Entities of the Canton of Geneva (Switzerland). This company was liquidated in 2017, and its obligations to third parties were transferred to SOCAR Trading.

SOCAR, which has become dangerous for cooperation, has more and more interests in Russia. According to the VChK-OGPU telegram channel, the Azerbaijani SOCAR became the buyer of the stake in the Antipinsky Oil Refinery, represented in Russia by fellow student Ilham Ragimov. At the same time, the opinions of another classmate of Putin, Nikolai Yegorov, who owned the refinery together with Dmitry Mazurov, were completely not taken into account in the transactions. Yes, then he was paid $ 25 million, but they say Yegorov himself is not happy with this. And then Boris Titov began to prepare a report on how Sberbank actually seized the refinery from Mazurov. And then, in the worst possible way for SOCAR, an investigation of journalists from Malta appeared, who found out that the SOCAR leadership may be involved in laundering money from Azerbaijan in Malta and the murder of journalist Daphne Galicia in the fall of 2017.

How did the money laundering scheme work? This scheme was revealed by Daphne Galicia, and today Rucriminal.info tells about it. To the accounts of offshore companies Egrant Inc. and Hearnville Inc, whose final beneficiary was Conrad Mizzy, and Tillgate Inc., owned by Keith Chambry, regularly received large sums of money from the bank account of a company owned by “politically significant persons” in Azerbaijan. Another such laying company was Dubai 17 Black, a 100% founder of which was Jorgen Fenech. That is, the main users of all these offshore companies were not Maltese, but Azerbaijanis - members of the ruling family, as well as key ministers and heads of SOCAR state corporation.

The most detailed scheme is visible on the example of the activities of the Maltese bank Pilatus. The very modest client base of this bank - only 150 people - consisted mainly of representatives of the Azerbaijani ruling elite. Among them were the daughters of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev Leyla and Arzu, whose companies regularly used Pilatus for international financial transfers. At the same time, cross-border cash flows passing through Pilatus along the routes Azerbaijan - Dubai (UAE) - Malta - British Virgin Islands amounted to billions of dollars.

The basis of the investigation was the route of one transaction conducted through this bank, about which Daphne Galicia herself managed to tell about in her blog. This transfer worth $ 1 million came from the account of the Dubai-based company Sahra FZCO, the beneficiary of which was the oldest daughter of the President of Azerbaijan, Leyla Aliyev, to the account of the company, which, as the journalist found out, was the wife of the Prime Minister of Malta Joseph Muscat.

It also turned out that initially the Dubai companies participating in the transactions Sahra FZCO and Shams al Sahra FZCO were registered with the sons of the Minister of Emergency Situations of Azerbaijan, Kamaleddin Heydarov, Tale and Nijat. Heydarov is known in Azerbaijan as the former director of one of the most corrupt structures - the customs, which he led from 1995 to 2006.

To be continued

Timofey Grishin