(Get ready for a long read!)
Andrew Jennings and Max Metzger report...
THE DEMOCRACY PROTESTORS in Baku's Khurdakhani jail have endured their morning
kicking and now, as the last of the 1,000 torchbearers approaches the Olympic
Stadium, we are poised for the faux Olympic-style Opening Ceremony. The
flaming Torch has traversed Azerbaijan, stopping in 59 towns, 39 of the halts
at a Hedar Aliyev Park or Square, each time paying homage at a statue of the
Father of the Nation.
It is a rip-off . . . but by oil-gushing billionaires. Maybe that's why
Thomas Bach, President of the IOC, is expected to take his VIP seat at the Baku
Olympic stadium this mid-June, clutching
a free tub of Caspian caviar.
The First Lady of Azerbaijan, Mehriban Aliyeva, will wave to
the thinly spread crowd of sports officials, schoolkids and a few mums and dads
in the 68,000- seat oval. She is in her early 50s and doesn't smile easily
after all that cutting and stitching. She drapes herself in pricey gowns,
rockstar shades, thick-soled Louboutins and shows more skin than you might
expect in a Muslim country. Forget to address her as First Lady and you risk
qualifying for the morning kicking.
The President's wife is the First Arbiter, chairing
the Organising Committee for these first – and probably last –
European Games. A senior member of one of the country's most powerful mafia
families she keeps the peace between the competing clans, the God Mother, distributing $8
billion worth of Games contracts.
Looting the country's gas and oil reserves beneath the Caspian has
enriched the First Families in the two decades since independence from the
collapsing Soviet Union. This bogus sports event is the latest plundering.
Staging them requires massive construction of arenas and swim pools. Whoopee!
To make it credible they need thousands of young athletes to show up.
Who can supply them? The most reliable trafficker in young flesh is the
International Olympic Committee. The bulk delivery is being organised by a
senior member, an Irishman with insider knowledge of Olympic corruption going
back 25 years. Helping out are senior officials of 49 European Olympic
Committees. But they are amateurs in the hands of the pros, the Corleones of
the South Caucasus.
THE SPORTS BAG stuffed with $10,000 in cash is handed over in the car park behind
President Heydar Aliyev's office in July 1997. An official counts it and the
two visiting gangsters, a Czech and an American, are ushered inside to begin
negotiations to steal the country's oil wealth. The man they would bribe needs
the money to buy the next presidential election.
The scam targeted Azerbaijan's vast oil and gas reserves belonging to
state-owned company SOCAR. The Western view of the post-Soviet world was that
public was bad and private good. One of the two men in the Baku car park was
the bouncing Czech, Viktor Kozeny, a veteran of
Eastern European privatisations.
Harvard-educated Viktor had tricked many a greedy fool out of massive
fees in the tortuous transfer of public assets to Oligarchs. He stayed ahead of
retribution by acquiring passports from Ireland and Grenada and relocating
to a gated community in the Bahamas. Occasionally Viktor showed up at
his $15 million residence in London's top draw Eaton Square and other times at
his $20 million mountain chateau in Aspen, Colorado.
Baku
would be another cash cow. Every citizen, issued with vouchers, their tiny
share of the oil, could cash in at the impromptu marketplace by Baku's 28 May subway station. Viktor set up a secretive company in
the British Virgin Islands with the endearing name of - believe this
- Oily Rock. He would buy vouchers for 50 cents and sell them to gullible
investors, mostly from the USA, for up to $25.
Viktor entertained his wealthy Aspen neighbours, handed round the Beluga
and talked of unbelievable riches, conveniently offshore. Ivana Trump and
Natalie Cole lit up the room. He moved his roadshow to New York and suckered a
senior US Senator who later became involved in combating corruption at the IOC,
liberated $15 million from the giant AIG insurance group and . . . hold your
breath . . . took a hedge fund for $125 million. He assured investors they were
getting a great deal in an emerging market and when they flipped SOCAR they
would get a ten times payback.
EVERY FEW DAYS in 1997 into 1998 private jets clogged the airspace above Baku, loaded
with millions of dollars destined for the Presidential Palace. The Feds
reckoned later that $180 million made the trip. Another $100 million was wired.
Who got it? Viktor names then President Heydar, his son Ilham, now President,
and a few Azeri capos.
First Lady Mehriban married into the Aliyev clan a dozen years earlier
and while she was never named in the subsequent indictments, Viktor's boys had
to chip in $1million a time when the family women went shopping in Paris,
London and New York. She doesn't talk about the $44,000 worth of white gold
necklace and earrings from Aspreys or $600,000 worth of desk decorations for
her father-in-law including a $48,000 sold gold bell push and a $101,000
jewelled picture frame - gifts on the ageing thief's 75th birthday.
By this time Viktor and his capos in Baku were holding tens of thousands
of vouchers and millions in cash for buying more. That was the excuse for the
presidential retinue to shake Viktor down for another $1 million to buy
protection from a squad of Chechen gunmen.
Then the extortion got serious. Heydar intended to be re-elected in
late1998 and that would take plenty of walk-about money. "They wanted
their bite," recalled Viktor in 2000. Heydar's boys closed down the
operation, retaining all the money, according to Viktor, prompting an FBI
Special Agent to comment, “The corrupt
Azeri officials scammed the scammers."
The Justice Department heard about the bribes
and launched indictments under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – the law that says you
must not bribe foreign government officials to get business. Bahamas refused to
extradite Viktor from Lyford Key and a scurrying of hedgefund managers and a
Swiss bank official turned State's witness. One small player was jailed for 12
months – and Heydar won the election.
Dr LEYLA YUNUS, academic
and internationally renowned human rights activist, who fought for human rights in Soviet times and translated
for Margaret Thatcher in the 1990s, will be missing from the Mob's sporty
ceremonies.
She dared
to stand up to Lady Mehriban's decree
that hundreds of homes must be demolished to make space for her pet family
project, the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest. The presenter was the First Daughter
Leyla Aliyeva, her popstar husband Emin closed the show and a family firm was
gifted a contract for the construction of the stunning 25,000-seat Crystal
Hall.
The First Lady's vindictiveness was staggering. She
sent in the bulldozers and without warning, demolished Dr Yunus's
Baku home and the offices of the
Institute for Peace and Democracy that also housed a women's crisis center and
an anti-landmine campaign group. She claimed the building stood in the way of a
new park surrounding the Crystal Hall. Police barred staff from retrieving personal and professional
documents as the walls fell.
That's not how you silence the brave, 59-year-old Dr Yunus. She gave an
interview to the New York Times listing 98 political prisoners
locked up by the regime. She organised a peace initiative with fellow activists
in long-time enemy, neighbouring Armenia.
Then she went too far and sent a letter last July to the Olympic bosses
begging them to take these European Games away, anywhere, but not in Azerbaijan
where abuse of human rights is a daily event.
The day after the letter was made public the thugs arrived
at her door. They took her and days later her husband, 59-year-old scientist
Arif. They have not been seen in public since. The Government says they are
charged with treason,
large-scale fraud, forgery, tax evasion and illegal business.
These pensioners are so dangerous that they
had to be locked up for three months pre-trial detention. In October it was
extended until February this year. Then it was extended again until August,
after the Games.
Baku's jails are as vile as you would fear. Her
brother-in-law Ramis was allowed to visit and reported, "Leyla has been
beaten and dragged by her hair by a prison guard and is being subjected to
constant psychological abuse." In November men in civilian clothes,
entered her cell and made sexually threatening gestures.
One of her lawyers disclosed that she has been
subjected to verbal and physical abuse by a senior guard and a fellow inmate in
her cell. There will be no more such reports. The Prosecutor has sacked both
her lawyers. He does not have to give a reason.
She is denied treatment for a liver enlargement, diabetes, hepatitis and eye
problems. She has lost 16 kilograms in custody and is denied parcels of special
food. Arif Yunus has suffered a stroke and is being held at a jail run by the
national security ministry, notorious for torturing inmates.
Old age is no barrier to torture in Baku's jails.
In her 2,400 word letter to the IOC leader supplying youngsters to the Games Dr
Yunus shone sunlight on one dissident family and how the Corleones
systematically murdered them, one by one.
Professor Novruzali Mammadov, an expert on the language of the Talish
minority whose homeland straddles the border with Iran, was arrested in Baku in
2007 and tortured to confess that he was an Iranian spy. Despite them breaking
his ribs and a collarbone the 69-year-old held firm. Over the next seven months
his son Kamran visited - and each time was grabbed by plainclothes police and
beaten. In September they put the boot in one time too many, dropping him home
covered in blood. Kamran was the first casualty, dying hours later.
To increase pressure the cops planted drugs on second son Emil and threatened him with a lengthy jail sentence -
unless his father signed the spying confession. The standoff continued for two
more years and Professor Mamedov was jailed for 10 years, ensuring that the
sick old man would never be free. The torturing never stopped and he died in his cell in 2009.
Forty days later his widow and son Emil were
driving to lay flowers on his grave. A truck smashed into their little car,
killing Emil.
Dr Leyla Yunus had addressed her letter to Patrick
Hickey from Dublin, a member of the IOC's Executive Board and president of the
European Olympic Committees who are supplying the young athletes to fill the
stadia.
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