European Values Bought and Sold
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EUROPEAN VALUES BOUGHT AND SOLD AN EXPLORATION INTO AZERBAIJAN’S SOPHISTICATED SYSTEM OF PROJECTING ITS INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE, BUYING WESTERN POLITICIANS AND CAPTURING INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS Freedom Files Analytical Centre March 2017 © Freedom Files Analytical Centre, March 2017 Freedom Files Analytical Centre is an NGO The report was produced with support of based in Moscow and Warsaw. It conducts members of the Working Group on reform research of human rights and democracy of international organisations of the Civic problems in authoritarian countries, develops Solidarity Platform, an 80-member NGO policy recommendations for international network for human rights advocacy in action, and advocates with inter-governmental Europe and Eurasia. The Platform is organisations and governments. The Centre’s exploring innovative ways for effective research looks, in particular, into the ways of advocacy to promote and defend human functioning of autocracies using repression, rights. Individual member organisations of corruption, and income from exports of natural the Platform do not necessarily endorse in resources, to control their societies, enrich the detail all of the observations, conclusions ruling groups, consolidate their rule, project and recommendations contained in the their influence at the international level and report. protect them from criticism on human rights. 2 TABLE OF CONTENT Acknowledgements 4 Introduction 5 Foundations of the international lobbying machine of Azerbaijan Systemic corruption as a basis of the kleptocratic regime in Azerbaijan 9 Diverse nature of Azerbaijani international lobbying and corruption network 10 Key goals of the Azerbaijani leadership and arguments it uses in the lobbying process 11 The main targets of lobbying 13 Management of the lobbying machine 15 Geographic focus and institutional arrangements 15 Relations of key partner countries with Azerbaijan and the main lobbyists in these countries Leading partners with diverse trade and geopolitical interests: France, Germany, UK, and Italy 17 Countries with non-transparent economic connections to Azerbaijan: Spain and Malta 44 Countries with immediate and direct interest in the Southern Corridor: Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece 50 Central and Eastern Europe Connections: Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic 56 Political parties in Europe 61 Influence through charitable, cultural and religious tolerance projects 62 Influence on parliamentary bodies: OSCE PA, PACE, and the European Parliament 63 A bourgeoning business of fake international election observation in favour of autocrats 83 Conclusions: How the Azerbaijani machine of international lobbying and corruption has worked and succeeded 89 Recommendations 93 Annex: Excerpts from the declarations by members of the UK Parliament 96 Index 103 3 Acknowledgements This report has been produced by the Freedom Files Analytical Centre with support of members of the Working Group on reform of international organisations of the Civic Solidarity Platform. The authors of this report are international experts in human rights, international organisations, and international politics with many years of experience in research, coalition building, and advocacy. For reasons of security, their names are not made public. Research for this report has involved studying more than 1,000 documents and publications and conducting over 40 semi-structured interviews in France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Georgia, Russia, and other countries throughout 2015-2016. Editing of the report was concluded in the beginning of March 2017. Authors’ interlocutors have included current and former members of PACE, staff of the delegations to PACE, members of the European Parliament and advisers to political groups and committees in the European Parliament, delegations to OSCE, members of OSCE PA, diplomats from ministries of foreign affairs of several European countries, members and staff of German Bundestag and national parliaments of several other European countries from across party spectrum, journalists, researchers and NGO experts from across Europe, former Azerbaijani officials, and, last but not least, courageous experts and activists from Azerbaijan. Authors thank cordially all of them for their openness and their dedication to human rights, rule of law, and integrity. Without their support, this report could not have been written. Many of them prefer to remain unnamed and authors are reserving the names of all of their interlocutors in this research for security reasons. Information included in this report is cited to the studied publications (more than 300 publications are referred to) or the authors’ interviews. Whenever possible, information obtained in the course of interviews was checked and verified from two or three independent sources. In some cases, when such verification was not possible but the information was deemed particularly important by the authors, it is indicated in the report as obtained from one source and requiring further verification. The content of this report and its conclusions and recommendations remain the sole responsibility of the authors. Research into and documentation of international illegitimate lobbying and corrupting practices by representatives of Azerbaijan and other countries will be continued. For inquiries and sharing relevant information with the authors of the report, please contact Yuri Dzhibladze, at [email protected]. 4 INTRODUCTION The idea of producing this report was born in the summer of 2015 when the crackdown on civil society, independent media, political opposition, and peaceful protesters in Azerbaijan seemed to be at its highest point in more than two decades. Most prominent Azerbaijani human rights defenders, a leading investigative journalist, youth activists, and a score of political opposition members were thrown in jail for years, along with dozens of other political prisoners.1 Numerous efforts of human rights organisations in many countries to campaign for their liberation had no visible effect. The autocratic government in Baku presided by self-confident ruler Ilham Aliyev appeared totally immune to any international attempts to reverse the crackdown. It acted increasingly defiantly in response to statements of concern by intergovernmental organisations. It seemed that the Azerbaijani leadership became particularly emboldened after their country’s chairmanship in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 2014 (thereafter referred to as the chairmanship in the Council of Europe) when instead of leading this oldest intergovernmental human rights and democracy organisation by example, it brought internal repression to an unprecedented level without any consequences to its international standing. The response of most international actors to the full-fledged human rights crisis in Azerbaijan was clearly insufficient. No economic or travel ban sanctions against Azerbaijan which international and domestic human rights groups called for, were feasible, given economic interests of many Western actors and the overall international focus of attention on the gridlock of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its involvement in the war in the east of Ukraine, and related sanctions against Russian officials and companies. As the health of imprisoned human rights defenders deteriorated and repression further increased in Azerbaijan, NGO activists from various countries were frantically looking for new ways to find additional leverage to influence the situation. Numerous brainstorms led international civic activists to the realisation of the need to develop a better understanding of how the Azerbaijani leadership is able to easily withstand international pressure or, in many cases, pre-empt and prevent it by skilfully using various tools of influence. By then, thanks to the work of leading investigative journalists such as Khadija Ismayilova and her colleagues from the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project,2 it was clear that one of the most corrupt regimes in the world had emerged in oil-rich Azerbaijan in the last two decades, where the ruling groups have illegally amassed enormous wealth, derived from unaccounted revenues from foreign sales of oil, a non-transparent system of ownership of merged public and private sectors as well as numerous assets abroad, and developed a vertical, integrated, and all-penetrating system of corruption. 1 See, for example, Azerbaijan: an area of darkness. Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muižnieks, Politico, 28.10.2015, http://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/azerbaijan-an-area-of-darkness; Justice behind bars: The persecution of civil society in Azerbaijan. Report by the International Partnership for Human Rights, 01.12.2015, http://iphronline.org/justice-behind-bars-in-azerbaijan-20151201.html#sthash.FjCktbnv.dpuf, and the European Parliament resolution of 10 September 2015 on Azerbaijan (2015/2840(RSP)), http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+TA+P8-TA-2015-0316+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN 2 TeliaSonera’s behind-the-scenes connection to Azerbaijani president’s daughters. Khadija Ismayilova, OCCRP, 15.07.2014, https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/2531-teliasoneras-behind-the-scenes-connection-to-azerbaijani-presidents- daughters; Azeri Enclave in Czech Republic. Pavla Holcova, Khadija Ismayilova and Jaromir Hason, OCCRP, 11.10.2012, https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/1666-azerbaijans-czech-enclave; Azerbaijani First Family