"SOCAR" and oligarch Turab Musayev put Ilham Aliyev under murder

"SOCAR" and oligarch Turab Musayev put Ilham Aliyev under murder

Top Manager of Socar Turab Musayev Involved the Head of Azerbaijan in the "Maltagate"

Today, December 24, marks the birthday of the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev.

According to sources, his mood is not very good. And the person to blame is the top manager of the Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR, Turab Musayev. He has become a figure in one of Europe’s most high-profile crimes - the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Following this, multimillion-dollar corruption schemes involving representatives of Azerbaijan’s ruling elite and members of the family of the President of the Republic, Ilham Aliyev, were revealed. (By the way, from 1994 to August 2003, the latter was the vice-president, and then the first vice-president of SOCAR). Daphne Caruana Galizia died while investigating these schemes.

The clouds are gathering over the top of Azerbaijan, Turab Musayev, and his brother Taleh with each passing day. Recently, the family of Daphne Caruana Galizia appealed to Europol for the necessary support in an investigation that is attempting to trace the shadowy money trail between Malta, Azerbaijan, and the United Arab Emirates. Already documents have surfaced showing that members of Azerbaijan’s ruling elite and members of the president’s family of the Republic, Ilham Aliyev, used this "laundry." These include leaders of the Azerbaijani oil state corporation SOCAR, Minister of Emergency Situations Kamaladdin Heydarov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Araz Azimov, and other top officials, as well as the president’s daughters - Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva. Through this "laundry," funds embezzled from Malta’s budget were also "laundered."

Daphne Caruana Galizia was investigating all these machinations. And on October 16, 2017, an explosion occurred in Malta. A bomb was planted under Daphne Caruana Galizia’s car.

Before her murder, there were numerous phone threats. And in November 2019, arrests started occurring in Malta concerning the Caruana Galizia case.

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

Fenech had a gas consortium with the Azerbaijani state company "SOCAR." According to the contracts organized by Fenech and Socar, Malta received gas at a strange price - 40% above the market rate. As a result, Malta has already lost over a billion dollars.

Yorgen Fenech

The consortium is accused not only of "schemes" with Azerbaijani gas but also of stories with the resale of Maltese British liquefied gas and financial manipulations that turned the island nation into a "laundry" for Azerbaijani capitals being withdrawn from the country.

In Europe, they are already openly talking about the involvement of the director of "Electrogas," Turab Musayev, in the combinations. He not only provided the connection between the Maltese and Azerbaijani side but, along with his brother Taleh, was a beneficiary of illegal activity in Malta.

The essence of the agreement between Azerbaijan and Malta

In 2013, the Maltese government announced a tender for the construction of a power plant on the island and its subsequent supply with liquefied gas.

The tender was won by "Electrogas," a third of which belongs to the Azerbaijani state enterprise Socar.

Then in 2015, "Electrogas" signed a contract with the same SOCAR for the supply of liquefied natural gas.

In 2017, deliveries began: and Malta buys gas at prices significantly higher than the market rates.

As the Guardian found out, the scheme worked as follows:

1. SOCAR purchased about $113 million worth of gas from Shell.

2. SOCAR sold all this gas to the company "Electrogas Malta," but for about $153 million, making a profit of $40 million.

3. Electrogas Malta resells the same gas to the Maltese company Enemalta at the same price. Then Enemalta - together with "Electrogas" - converts the gas into electricity.

The gas is transported in liquified form. Azerbaijan has large reserves of oil and gas but doesn’t produce liquefied gas. SOCAR has no experience in producing or trading liquefied gas.

Turab Musayev represents SOCAR’s interests on the Electrogas board, and he is also the director of LNG and business development departments at SOCAR itself, and an employee of its Swiss subsidiary - SOCAR Trading. According to Times of Malta journalist Ivan Martin, an intermediary of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder revealed that shortly before the crime, Yorgen Fenech met and had a long conversation with "some Turab." The reporter has no doubt that this was Turab Musayev, and provides as evidence in his Twitter a fragment of email correspondence, where Musayev is essentially coordinating the Maltese government’s "problem-solving" activities for the state energy company Enemalta. It is noteworthy that the email begins with the words "This morning Jorgen (Fenech) and I talked to Konrad Mizzi..." - thus immediately mentioning two people suspected of being involved in the murder of the journalist. And of course, it is impossible not to note the fact that a citizen of Azerbaijan, representing SOCAR’s interests, together with a local businessman, decides the fate of Malta’s "national treasure."

Turab Musayev works closely with his brother - Taleh Musayev. Specifically, the brothers jointly own a blocking stake in the British company Savannah Petroleum, engaged in oil and gas development in Africa: Taleh through his owned companies, Aralia Capital S.A. and Peleng Holding Corporation, SOCAR Trading via Luzon Investments S.A.

The management structure of SOCAR Trading is generally a kind of replica of Azerbaijan’s leadership system, where everything is tied exclusively to family and clan relationships. Turab Musayev formally works as a deputy to Hayal Ahmadzada - the 42-year-old vice-president for business development. In turn, Taleh Musayev was linked with Hayal Ahmadzada through the management of the company STL Oil and Gas SA, as stated on the official website of the Geneva (Switzerland) corporate registration office.

This company was liquidated in 2017, and its obligations to third parties were transferred to SOCAR Trading.

Becoming dangerous for cooperation, SOCAR is increasingly interested in Russia. According to the VCheK-OGPU Telegram channel, the buyer of a stake in the Antipinsky Refinery was the Azerbaijani SOCAR, represented in Russia by Ilgar Rahimov, a fellow student of the president. Meanwhile, during the deals, the opinion of another fellow student of Putin, Nikolay Yegorov, who owned the refinery with Dmitriy Mazurov, was not considered at all. Yes, he was later paid $25 million, but they say Yegorov himself is not happy with this. And here Boris Titov began preparing a report on how in fact Sberbank seized the refinery from Mazurov. And here, also inconvenient for SOCAR, came an investigation by Maltese journalists who found out that SOCAR’s leadership could be involved in laundering Azerbaijani money in Malta and the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in the fall of 2017.

How did the money laundering scheme work? This scheme was discovered by Daphne Caruana Galizia, and today we tell about it. Large sums of money regularly came to the accounts of offshore companies Egrant Inc. and Hearnville Inc, whose ultimate beneficiary was Konrad Mizzi, and the company Tillgate Inc., which belonged to Keith Schembri, from the bank account of a company owned by "politically significant persons" in Azerbaijan. Another such front company was the Dubai-based 17 Black, 100% owned by Yorgen Fenech. That is, the main users of all these offshore companies were not Maltese but Azerbaijanis - members of the ruling family and also key ministers and heads of the state corporation SOCAR.

The scheme is most clearly visible in the example of the activity of the Maltese bank Pilatus. The rather modest client base of this bank - only 150 people - mainly consisted of representatives of Azerbaijan’s ruling elite. Among them were the daughters of the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, Leyla, and Arzu, whose companies regularly used Pilatus for international financial transfers. At the same time, cross-border financial flows through Pilatus following routes Azerbaijan - Dubai (UAE) - Malta - British Virgin Islands were calculated in billions of dollars.

The basis of the investigation was the route of one transaction carried out through this bank, which Daphne Caruana Galizia herself managed to recount in her blog. This transfer of $1 million came from the account of the Dubai company Sahra FZCO, whose beneficiary was the eldest daughter of the president of Azerbaijan, Leyla Aliyeva, to the account of a firm which, as the journalist discovered, belonged to the wife of the Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat.

It also turned out initially that the Dubai companies involved in the transactions Sahra FZCO and Shams al Sahra FZCO were registered to the sons of the Minister of Emergency Situations of Azerbaijan Kamaladdin Heydarov - Taleh and Nijat.

Heydarov is well-known in Azerbaijan as the former head of one of the most corrupt structures - customs, which he led from 1995 to 2006.