January 31, 2022 - Transparency International UK welcomes today’s judgement for forfeiture of £5.6 million pounds worth of suspect funds from UK bank accounts that went through the ‘Azerbaijan Laundromat’, an industrial-scale money laundering operation and slush fund used to move £2.2billion out of the country.

The accounts under investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA) belonged to the family of Jevanshir Feyziyev, an MP in Azerbaijan and Chair of the country’s inter-parliamentary group with the UK.

Investigators had sought to recover up to £15.3 million from the family, however only managed to persuade a judge at Westminster Magistrates Court that just over a third of it was, on the balance of probabilities, criminal property.

Anonymous UK shell companies were key to moving these funds out of Azerbaijan and into the British economy via bank accounts in Latvia and Estonia.  

Steve Goodrich, Head of Research & Investigations at Transparency International UK, said:

“This judgement is indicative of law enforcement’s current performance at tackling suspect wealth in the UK – promising signs of progress, but still some way to go. While a partial victory is better than defeat, I’m sure the NCA will be keen to secure bigger and better results in future cases. If the government put its money where its mouth is and invested more heavily in fighting financial crime, we might see the UK catch up with the US when it comes to tackling corruption and kleptocracy.

“At the heart of this case was the abuse of UK shell companies that were used to launder suspect funds out of Azerbaijan. The government has promised for years to reform Companies House so this kind of thing wouldn’t happen again, and has finally committed to bring legislation forward this year. Were ministers to drag their heels and fail to announce the Economic Crime Bill in the next Queen’s speech it’d look like they were going soft on serious financial criminality.”

Notes to editors:

The Azerbaijani Laundromat was uncovered by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in 2017.

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