Javanshir Feyziyev
(Picture: Handout)Three millionaires from a family with a mansion overlooking Regent’s Park were on Monday told by a judge to forfeit £5.6 million to the National Crime Agency on the grounds that it is “dirty money” brought into the country unlawfully.
Parvana Feyziyeva, the wife of the Azeri tycoon and MP Dr Javanshir Feyziyev, the couple’s son Orkhan, and nephew Elman Javanshir were all accused by law enforcers of profiting from corrupt funds provided to them by the politician and chanelled into Britain via the “Azerbaijan laundromat” scheme.
They had all claimed instead that their wealth was derived from the legitimate business activities of Dr Feyziyev, who also paid for his family’s multi-million pound home on Cumberland Terrace next to Regent’s Park.
But in a judgment at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, district judge John Zani partially backed the NCA’s case and ordered the surrender of just over £5.6 million out of £15.3 million held in the trio’s frozen bank accounts.
Most of the money will be forfeited by Mrs Feyziyeva, who will have to give up £4.4 million to the NCA. Her son Orkhan will forfeit £1 million, while law enforcers will also take £240,000 from Mr Javanshir.
Giving judgment, Judge Zani said there was evidence that the “key elements of money laundering” were present in relation to the sums he was ordering to be forfeited.
He said that Mrs Feyziyeva’s forfeited savings derived “ from monies that came from Hilux and Polux that arise from criminal conduct”.
He added that he also rejected an explanation provided by the London law firm Withers that £240,000 paid into an account held by Elman Javanshir for “dividends” was in fact payment for employment and instead came from money laundering and should be forfeited.
The judge also ruled that although the NCA had been unable to prove its case in relation to much of the frozen money in Orkhan Javanshir’s accounts, £1 million should be forfeited because of evidence that it derived from payments from his parents that traced back to false invoices for steel piping and to an illegal “exchange house”.
The NCA welcomed the ruling saying that the court had been satisfied that "there was overwhelming evidence" that fictious documents had been produced "in order to mask the underlying money laundering activities of those orchestrating the accounts" and that a "significant money laundering scheme in existence in Azerbaijan, Estonia and Latvia" lay behind sums paid into the forfeited accounts
Andy Lewis, the head of civil recovery at the NCA, added: "This is a substantial forfeiture of money laundered through the Azerbaijan laundromat, and our success highlights the risk to anyone who uses these schemes. We were able to recover these millions without needing to prove the exact nature of the original criminal activity. We will continue to use civil powers to target money entering the UK via illegitimate means.”
Ben Russell, deputy director of the National Economic Crime Centre, said: “This case demonstrates that the NCA’s commitment to investigating and seizing the proceeds of international corruption and associated money laundering. The UK is hostile to illicit finance, and will use every available tool to tackle it."
Monday’s ruling follows a hearing last year in which the NCA’s barrister Collingwood Thompson QC told the court that the money laundering operation used to channel the money to the trio’s accounts included the use of a series of false documents and contracts.
He said it also involved the use of a “cloned” company and other shell companies to move money via banks in Estonia and Latvia, as well as masking illicit transactions under the cover of purported imports of steel piping worth more than one billion US dollars that were “highly improbable” to have ever taken place.
Instead, the barrister said the reality was that the money in the accounts of Dr Feyziyev’s wife, son and nephew was likely to be the proceeds of “corruption, theft, fraud and money laundering”.
Mr Thompson added that although Dr Feyziyev, the co-founder of the large Avromed pharmaceutical company in Azerbaijan, was not subject to the forfeiture proceedings, he was “central to this case because the funds that are sought to be forfeited largely came from bank accounts under his control.”
He said this money had come from the MP’s account at the ABLV bank in Latvia, which in turn had received transfers of nearly $34.5 million from another account at the same bank held by the Avromed company that he co-founded.
He told the court that the same Avromed account had separately received payments totalling $36 million from two companies – Hilux and Polux – identified as core to the operation of the Azerbaijan laundromat scheme and that the purported transactions to justify these payments were not genuine.
Mr Thompson added that the purpose of the money transfers from the MP to his wife and son was to give them the wealth to move to Britain, where they now live permanently, under the Tier 1 investor scheme.
He added that examples of the suspect methods used to transfer the money included transactions which had “no commercial sense” showing large payments into an Avromed account in the ABLV bank in Latvia for the purported supply of goods, followed shortly after by transfers of similar amounts into Dr Feyziyev’s personal account and then on to his family members.
“How on earth can a company make money by giving it away,” Mr Thompson added, saying that the NCA believed the explanation was that no business had in fact been conducted and that the Avromed accounts were simply being used to get illicit money into the banking system
All three of the NCA’s targets had denied wrongdoing and their barrister Charles Bott QC, had argued that the NCA’s case was “misconceived” and based on “generalised assertions” and “exaggerated inferences” about the nature of the transactions used to move into the millionaires’ accounts.
A statement issued on the family’s behalf outside the court, had also denied the NCA’s allegations, saying that the trio’s wealth derived from “Dr Feyziyev’s successful business career” and that he had “staunchly opposed and actively fought against money laundering” throughout his career.
The NCA had originally sought the forfeiture of £15.3 million held in the trio’s accounts. The money comprised nearly £6.5 million belonging to Orkhan Javanshir, one account held by Parvana Feyziyeva containing more than £7.8 million, and two held by Elman Javanshir totalling just over £1 million.
Judge Zani found that the NCA had not been able to prove its case in relation to some of the funds, which was why he was ordering the forfeiture of only £5,6 million of the total law enforcers were targeting.
