Azerbaijan president’s son, 12, ‘buys £30m worth of luxury Dubai property’
The 12-year-old son of the Azerbaijan president has gone on a
multi-million pound property spending spree, buying up a series of
luxury Dubai waterfront mansions.
By Andrew Hough
Daily Telegraph/uk
Published: 10:00PM GMT 05 Mar 2010
Previous1 of 3 ImagesNext An aerial view of the man-made Palm Jumeirah
island off the coast of the Gulf emirate of Dubai, which has come to
resemble the area’s extravagance. Photo: AFP
The seafront of the Atlantis, The Palm Resort is also located at the
Palm Jumeirah Island. Photo: GETTY
Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev’s son, Heydar, is reported to be
the owner of the new property. Photo: GETTY
Heydar Aliyev, the son of Ilham Aliyev, the oil-rich country’s
president, allegedly spent almost £30 million (US$44 million) on nine
waterfront mansions in the southern Gulf emirate earlier this year,
reports said.
The boy, who was 11 at the time, made the purchase in the Palm
Jumeirah development over two weeks, the Washington Post reported on
Friday.
Is this bye-bye Dubai? Heydar’s name and his date of birth appeared on
Dubai Land Department records, which were obtained by the paper.
The details listed on the property records were the same as those of
the son of the former Soviet Republic’s president, whose annual salary
is about £150,000 ($228,000).
The purchases are about the equivalent to 10,000 years’ worth of
salary for the average citizen of the country.
Industry sources with knowledge of the transactions told the paper the
purchases were made by a buyer representing Azerbaijan’s ruling
family, with the properties paid for `upfront’.
It remains unclear whether the boy was given the property as a gift or
how he could have bought into the development, after officials in
Baku, the country’s capital, refused to comment on the claims.
"I have no comment on anything. I am stopping this talk. Goodbye,"
Azer Gasimov, the president’s spokesman, told the paper when contacted
for comment.
He did not respond to repeated further requests for comment.
The luxury real estate scheme is popular with multimillionaires,
British footballers and celebrities and is also home to the world’s
biggest artificial island.
The island off the coast of Dubai has become a symbol of the emirate’s
reputation for luxury and extravagance.
Markets across the world were rattled in November after Dubai World,
the government investment company behind its most ambitious projects
including Palm Jumeirah, said it was seeking to delay repayment on a
tranche of its debt.
The Post said the amount of Dubai property allegedly amassed by the
family’s children, or people with similar names to them, now reaches
almost £50 million (US$75 million) after similar purchases by his
daughters.
The property records also listed the names of Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva,
whose names, were the same and their ages `roughly’ similar.
The paper said the exact dates of birth could not be established, but
various reports said Leyla’s birthday was the same as the Azerbaijani
woman who was listed in the documents.
The president’s older daughter, Leyla, is married to Emin Agalarov, a
wealthy Russian businessman while relatives of the first lady,
Mehriban, have lucrative business interests in Azerbaijan.
Agalarov would not comment to the paper when asked whether he had
helped buy Dubai properties for his wife or Aliyev’s other children.
He said he had "joined businesses and properties" with his wife.
"We wish not to comment on that,’ he said in an email to the paper.
Azerbaijan, which became an independent nation with the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991, has vast sources of oil.
It has been ruled almost continuously by the same family with the
current president taking over from Heydar Aliyev, his father, who was
president from 1993 until his death in 2003.
The Aliyev government and its supporters have recently sponsored trips
to Baku by prominent foreigners and hiring lobbyists to trumpet the
country’s achievements.
Last year The Daily Telegraph disclosed that Tony Blair’s new
paymaster was an obscure oligarch with business links to Syria, Iran
and Afghanistan.
Nizami Piriyev, an Azerbaijan-based millionaire, paid Mr Blair to fly
to Baku in December to open his new `methanol plant’ funded by a
British government-backed bank.
Mr Blair typically charges tens of thousands of pounds simply to give
a speech and is therefore thought to have received more than £100,000
for his trip to Azerbaijan.
A spokesman said he was not planning an ongoing relationship with Mr
Piriyev and did not have any dealings with the family while in office.
The Post also reported that David Plouffe, President Obama’s former
election campaign manager, visited Baku last year to deliver a
paid-for speech a few months before Mr Blair.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress