ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia
 Tuesday


Balayan: Baku tries to distract the attention of the international
community from the corruption scandal through the Karabakh conflict

Yerevan October 24

Marianna Mkrtchyan. Baku once again misused the site of the
international conference in Palermo, which has nothing to do with the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This was stated in his microblog on Twitter
by the press secretary of the Armenian Foreign Ministry Tigran
Balayan.

"These manipulations are aimed at diverting attention from the
corruption scandal, better known as Landromat, which has disgraced
Azerbaijan to the whole world because of corruption and aggressive
criminal positions," Balayan wrote.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian on October 24 in Palermo
takes Participation in the OSCE summit on flows of refugees and
migrants.Recall that the Center for the Study of Corruption and
Organized CrimeCrime (OCCRP) unveiled an investigation into the
establishment of the authorities Azerbaijan fictitious companies in
the UK for the purpose of money laundering. In total, it is about 2.9
billion dollars, which went to pay bribes to European politicians, the
acquisition of luxury goods and other self-serving purposes. The
document notes that from 2012 to 2014, against the background of mass
arrests of activists and journalists in Azerbaijan, representatives of
the ruling elite of the country bribed European politicians who
lobbied Baku's interests in the EU and blocked resolutions condemning
human rights violations in the transcaucasian republic. From the
accounts of these fictitious companies, personal expenses of
high-ranking officials of Azerbaijan were also paid.

In addition, the accounts of these companies received tens of millions
of euros from the Russian supplier of arms - Rosoboronexport, the
investigation notes. Later, this money was transferred to the account
of the first vice-premier of Azerbaijan. Companies in the UK that
participated in money laundering were registered with front men from
Azerbaijan. These firms provided fictitious accounts, although
billions of euros passed through their accounts. All of them were
serviced in the Estonian branch of one bank - Danske Bank from
Denmark. Data on the flow of money on their accounts was received by
the Danish newspaper Berlingske, which shared them with the Organized
Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The case was
conditionally called "Laundromat".