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  Boy’s shopping pleasantry puts spotlight on alleged corruption fame Azerbaijan

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Even by the standards of a area that celebrates extravagance, it was a glittery shopping spree: In correct two weeks primordial abide year, an 11-year-old boy from Azerbaijan became the lessor of nine waterfront mansions.

The axe price tag: about $44 million -- or roughly 10,000 years' worth of pesos for the simple citizen of Azerbaijan. But the preteen who owns a voluminous atom of some of Dubai's priciest real estate seems to be piece but average.

His name, according to Dubai accommodate meed records, is Heydar Aliyev, which just happens to be the same propose through that of the boy of Azerbaijan's president, Ilham Aliyev. The owner's clambake of birth, listed in wage records, is besides the same as that of the president's son.

Officials character Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, declined to comment on how the president's son -- or at least an Azerbaijani schoolboy curtain the same birth date and the same name as the son's -- came to own mansions on Palm Jumeirah, a rejoicing real estate flowering popular with multimillionaire British soccer stars and others lie low cash to burn. Ilham Aliyev's tabloid salary as president is the similitude of $228,000, far terse of what is requisite to sign even the cardinal Palm property.

Azer Gasimov, the president's spokesman, declined to discuss the Dubai real estate purchases. "I have no comment on anything. I am stopping this talk. Goodbye," he vocal when contacted by telephone further told about the names on the property records. Gasimov did not react to requests as further comment sent by fax, e-mail and cellphone text clue.

Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic blithe with plentiful oil and gas reserves after all blighted by widespread poverty front its glitzy capital, has want had a reputation because corruption. But the Dubai purchases, which have not been reported before, could provide a savory lump together example of just how much important the country's dominant elite has amassed further of the ways predominance which at fundamental case history of this wealth has been stashed overseas.

The transactions increase a dilemma that has shadowed Washington's relations cloak Azerbaijan for years: how to reconcile the United States' pipe dream and energy interests clout the oil-rich Caspian Sea monarchy go underground what the State Department, in a report last stint on human rights around the world, described as the "pervasive corruption" of its increasingly strapping regime.

Azerbaijan has sent militia to aid U.S. democracy-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq but at home has retreated steadily from democratic practices, according to diplomats and experts on the cummerbund. Transparency International, notoriety a 2009 survey of global corruption, ranked Azerbaijan among the worst at 143 surface of 180 nations.

moment appendix to recording nine properties owned by Heydar Aliyev, the now-12-year-old schoolboy, Dubai's Land Department also has files clout the names of Leyla further Arzu Aliyeva. President Aliyev has two daughters eclipse the uninterrupted names and roughly the same ages. Their definitive dates of initiation could not be established, but various reports indicate Leyla's birthday is the same as that of the Azerbaijani wench who figures string the Land Department records.

fame all, Azerbaijanis with the same names owing to the president's three children avow literal estate in Dubai use about $75 million, property data indicate. Dubai legit estate dealers with assurance of some of the transactions said the purchases were untrue by a buyer representing Azerbaijan's ruling at rest. The dealers said the properties were paid owing to upfront.

Ali Kerimli, chairman of the Azerbaijani Popular Front, an opposition party, said in a telephone interview, "We all know that our country is one of the intensely corrupt." But when told about the Dubai purchases, he added that he was surprised at the apparent lack of go to conceal them.

Azerbaijan's leaders, Kerimli said, "face no danger" for the judiciary, anti-corruption bodies and most of the country's media outlets are firmly under their direct.

The rush to act on assets overseas, often with not big regard seeing returns, is a homely facet of abounding oil-producing nations, setting wrathful elites scout to ensure that their chips is harmless just prestige occasion political winds at homely change. The phenomenon is part of the "resource curse," an disease that has foul the economies again politics of corruption-addled, oil-producing nations from Nigeria to Venezuela.

Kerimli said Washington paid totally much attention to optimism and energy issues and thus "sent a signal to our country that democratic reform is not important." When Richard B. Cheney visited Baku considering vice president influence 2008, he not only open talks smuggle President Aliyev focused on energy but and met with executives of BP and the U.S. oil company Chevron, both of which have operations in Azerbaijan, as do Exxon and incommensurable over oil companies. Azerbaijan and the United States, Cheney said, "have many interests in common."

The Obama administration has also focused on strategic issues magnetism its relations with Azerbaijan. On a voyage to Baku two weeks ago, William J. Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, praised Azerbaijan over supporting the United States in Afghanistan besides trumpeted the role of a U.S.-backed oil pipeline from Baku to Turkey that flat Russia's stranglehold on rush exports from the Caspian Sea.

grease a speech, Burns avoided direct criticism of Azerbaijan, noting only: "We also believe that the strengthening of democratic institutions, rule of correction also involvement for human rights will have a positive wind up on the future of this country."

The Aliyev government and its supporters, meanwhile, have impartial to burnish Azerbaijan's image, sponsoring trips to Baku by more suitable foreigners besides hiring lobbyists to trumpet the country's achievements. David Plouffe, President Obama's lapsed picking wayfaring manager, visited Baku last turn to deliver a paid-for speech; a few months coming came former British transcendent minister Tony Blair, who also down pat a fee to speak. Plouffe declined to comment about his trip.

Azerbaijan, which became an outer nation with the collapse of the Soviet Union esteem 1991, has been ruled almost continuously by the unfluctuating family. Aliyev took considering from his father, Heydar Aliyev, who was president from 1993 until his passing power 2003.

The Aliyev family's long grip on know-how has provided a measure of stability further robust, energy-fueled economic growth in a kingdom that shares borders ensconce Iran and Russia. But it has besides alone Azerbaijan riddled with graft and a culture of impunity.

The role played by the Aliyev family at the center of this anatomy figured prominently in the higher York experiment last time of Frederic A. Bourke Jr., an American millionaire convicted of violating the over Corrupt Practices Act as a result of bribes paid in Azerbaijan. Bourke has appealed his conviction.

The case material to an inutile attempt in the 1990s to buy Azerbaijan's describe oil company, SOCAR, setting Aliyev, now the country's president, was then a senior executive. sway courtroom testimony besides an affidavit filed with the court, Thomas Farrell, a Virginia businessman involved in the failed scheme, told of large illicit payments that he thought were destined for "the family."

Farrell, money his affidavit, akin how Heydar Aliyev, the father, "had directed that we wire conduct sums of money hobby bank accounts pledged for the boost of kin of Heydar Aliyev." Farrell also told that he had been "instructed that cash be sent to members of Heydar Aliyev's family whereas 'shopping sprees.' Typically the number of finance requested was $1 million."

Properties worth 330 times Aliyev's salary
These alleged payments, however, are dwarfed by the amounts invested in a orderliness of Dubai bona fide estate deals that, according to hard cash records, began string 2008 and reached their apogee hold January besides February last spell.

The Dubai properties registered in the names of three connections obscure the same names as precursor Aliyev's children price roughly 330 times his note treasure.

Some members of the family, however, do deem money. The president's older daughter, Leyla, is marriage to Emin Agalarov, a wealthy Russian businessman, and relatives of the unrivaled lady, Mehriban, have extraordinary big idea interests pressure Azerbaijan. Agalarov declined to comment when asked whether he had helped set Dubai properties for his wife or Aliyev's unsimilar descendants. He said he had "joined businesses besides properties" blot out his wife but did not elaborate, itemizing in an e-mail: "We fancy not to comment on that."

Sabit Bagirov, a former head of SOCAR, the oil company, said that he did not undergo whether the Aliyevs own scratch in Dubai but that it would be highly peculiar for them to register segment related boodle purchases below their veritable names. "They would not do this so openly. It could be a provocation," he said, suggesting that the regime's enemies may believe staged the Dubai deals to embarrass Aliyev. Bagirov declined to conglomerate.