An investigation into the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Galicia led to representatives of the ruling elite of Azerbaijan. Documents released last week by Times of Malta reporter Ivan Martin show that among the “beneficiaries” of this crime may be the leaders of the Azerbaijani oil state corporation SOCAR, which has recently been extremely active in Russia and whose interests are represented in the Russian Federation by classmate of President Ilham Rahimov. Details in the material Rucriminal.info.
One of the alleged organizers of the assassination of Galicia, businessman Jorgen Fenech, was recently arrested on his yacht. Fenech is the son of the late businessman George Fenech and comes from a family that runs one of Malta's most influential business groups - the Tumas Group. The group has interests in various industries. In particular, the Tumas Group entered the energy industry through its company Gem Holdings. Gem Holdings owns Electro Gas along with Socar, an Azerbaijani state-owned energy company. The consortium was selected by the Maltese state-owned company Enemalta in 2013 for the construction of a gas power plant and associated gas processing infrastructure. The state order for the construction amounted to 450 million euros. And then, with the assistance of corrupt Maltese officials, this power station became a channel for reselling liquefied gas, which SOCAR, in turn, purchased from Shell, Azerbaijan does not produce its own LNG.
In 2017, SOCAR purchased 380 million cubic meters with delivery to Malta. m. of liquefied natural gas (14 million MMBTU) for $ 113 million, and Malta, through the state corporation Enemalta, was forced to purchase the same amount of raw materials for $ 153 million. The scheme was designed in such a way that the joint venture Electrogas acted as a formal buyer of LNG, and Enemalta was already using gas, using budgetary funds. As a result, over the past 4-5 years, Malta has been buying gas at a price 30-40% higher than its neighboring Greece, Italy or Turkey. In this way, Jam News suggests, Azerbaijani and Maltese corrupt officials "pulled" at least $ 1 billion from the budget of the island state.
At the same time, the opening of Electrogas thermal power plants was repeatedly postponed, and the enterprise was bogged down in debts, up to the point that salaries to employees of the power plant were delayed. The journalist Daphne Caruana Galicia, who was trying to investigate the corruption scheme, drew attention to these facts. Also, the object of her investigation was the transactions passing through the Maltese Pilatus Bank and very similar to the money laundering in the interests of the ruling family of Azerbaijan. Daphne’s investigations were based on the already famous Panama Archive — documents from the Mossack Fonseca law firm — and were aimed primarily at exposing corruption in the highest echelons of Malta.
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.
The investigation revealed multimillion-dollar corruption schemes involving representatives of the ruling elite of Azerbaijan and members of the family of President Ilham Aliyev. The documents released last week by Times of Malta reporter Ivan Martin, were not the first evidence that the “beneficiaries” of this crime could be the leaders of the Azerbaijani oil state corporation SOCAR, the Minister of Emergencies, Kamaladdin Heydarov, the deputy foreign ministers Araz Azimov and other senior officials, as well as the president’s daughter, Leila and Arzu Aliyeva. And on the same day, a description of a dubious deal appeared in the press, as a result of which Malta for several years purchased gas from SOCAR at a price 30-40% higher than the market price.
According to Reuters, the investigation considers Fenech to be the main organizer and "technical sponsor" of the murder, who paid for the "work" of killers in the amount of 150 thousand euros. The arrest of Jorgen Fenech, whose interests are closely related to Azerbaijan and SOCAR, has significantly expanded the horizons of the investigation. The Europeans began to carefully re-read the articles of Daphne Galicia again - this is evidenced by the sharp increase in traffic in the last days of her Internet blog, which continues to lead the sons of the murdered journalist. And it is obvious that the figures of the main "beneficiaries" of her death are now seen far beyond Malta.
In particular, the Times of Malta managed to become the owner of the correspondence of Turab Musaev with businessman Jorgan Fenech, accused of organizing the murder of Daphne Galicia, and a number of Maltese officials involved in financial fraud. Rucriminal.info cites fragments of this correspondenceю
It testifies, among other things, that Musaev was not only aware of the abuses that took place, but actively participated in them, and even together with partners tried to influence the policies of the Maltese state corporation Enemalta.
It is noteworthy that, along with the post of director of Electrogas, Turab Musayev is the director of the LNG and business development departments at the Azerbaijani state-owned company SOCAR, and is also an employee of the SOCAR's Swiss subsidiary, SOCAR Trading, namely, the executive director of the Azerbaijani group Socar’s Genevan. At the same time, Turab Musaev and his brother Taleh Musaev are shareholders of the British company Savannah Petroleum, which has serious interests in Nigeria, where assets were also acquired from the Musaevs.
According to Rucriminal.info, it follows from an investigation by Maltese journalists that Talekh Musaev “entered” Savannah Petroleum through his firms Aralia-Capital, Peleng Holding and Taleh Corporation. Meanwhile, Savannah Petroleum is considered a competitor of SOCAR in the oil and gas market, and therefore the British-Nigerian business of the brothers falls within the definition of a conflict of interests of civil servants.
In Malta, among other things, Turab Musaev was remembered for his initiatives to use the power of Electrogas to mine bitcoins - Malta Today told about this proposal addressed to a group of Maltese parliamentarians a year ago.
Musayev’s career ties are an ideal illustration of how mutual responsibility and the clan management principle work in Azerbaijan. In SOCAR Trading, Turab Musayev formally works as the deputy of Khayyal Akhmedzade. There are conflicting legends about this manager in Azerbaijan: on the one hand, he is known as the initiator of a number of extremely unsuccessful, unprofitable projects for state corporations, and on the other, as the owner of mega-expensive real estate in Colony, an elite suburb of Geneva.
The company STL Oil and Gas SA, which is jointly managed by Taleh Musaev and Khayyal Akhmedzadeh, is also registered at the registration office of the legal entities of the canton of Geneva (Switzerland). The business line of this company is stated as “storing and managing investments in oil and gas projects and services in the oil and gas industry in Angola by acquiring or creating subsidiaries in the oil and gas industry in Angola and acquiring assets in the oil and gas production sector in Angola”. That is, this is another project aimed at the "development" of Africa and registered - which is noteworthy - at the head office of the Geneva office of SOCAR Trading. STL Oil and Gas SA was liquidated in 2017, and its obligations to third parties were transferred to SOCAR Trading.
In the course of investigations into the murder of Daphne Galicia, it turns out that an Azerbaijani company, in collusion with Maltese officials, actually imposed terms of purchase of "blue fuel" on the whole country, Malta. Moreover, these conditions were far from market - to the disadvantageous side of Malta.
In addition, with their help, a whole offshore network was built to convert the "oil and gas" money of Azerbaijan into the personal assets of Minister Kamaladdin Heydarov and his sons, Araz Azimov and his relatives, Adnan and Khayyam Akhmedzade, daughters of President Leil and Arzu Aliyev. In a word, all those whom in Azerbaijan it is customary to call “family” in a whisper: one large “family” of President Ilham Aliyev. And this is just a small part of the names that pop up during the investigation into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galicia.
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, which found out that the SOCAR leadership could be involved in laundering money from Azerbaijan in Malta and the murder of journalist Daphne Galicia in the fall of 2017.
To be continued
Timofey Grishin
