A mansion in Knightsbridge and a golf club in Ascot owned by the wife of the jailed Azeri banker Jahangir Hajiyev have been forfeited to the British state as part of a settlement worth an estimated £18.5m to taxpayers.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the luxury properties were obtained by Hajiyev as a “direct result of large-scale fraud and embezzlement, false accounting and money laundering” linked to the looting of a state-owned bank in Azerbaijan.
The assets, which the NCA said were funnelled through offshore jurisdictions including Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands, were the first to be subject to “unexplained wealth orders” (UWOs) introduced in 2017.
Crime agencies can use UWOs – which have previously been called “McMafia” laws after a BBC drama – to trace potentially corruptly obtained assets.
The NCA said it had seized the properties after a lengthy court battle over a UWO imposed on Hajiyev’s wife, Zamira Hajiyeva.
A trustee will auction off the assets, which have been estimated to have a combined value of £26.5m in previous court hearings.
The government will get 70% of the proceeds, minus the NCA’s costs, with the remainder restored to Hajiyeva under the terms of a settlement agreement.
The actual amount recovered will depend on what the assets are sold for.
In 2018, Hajiyeva lost a court battle to prevent herself from being named as “Mrs A”, the controller of offshore companies that housed the assets. She also lost a subsequent appeal against the UWO in the supreme court.
Hajiyeva, whose £1.6m-a-year shopping trips to Harrods were revealed in court, is one of several family members whom the authorities claimed Hajiyev had used to siphon money out of his home country, Azerbaijan. The family has denied the allegations.
On Thursday, the NCA said it had seized two assets understood to be the 170-acre Mill Ride Golf Club in Ascot, Berkshire, and a five-bedroom home on Walton Street in Knightsbridge, London, 100 yards from the doors of Harrods department store.
Hajiyev was convicted in 2016 of multiple offences relating to his tenure as chairman of state-owned International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), including abuse of office, fraud and embezzlement.
In 2019, he was also convicted of embezzlement from the Moscow subsidiary of the IBA. He is now serving a 16-year jail sentence in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
The NCA said it had identified “numerous” examples of funds from the IBA being routed by an associate of Hajiyev’s through multiple accounts in ways consistent with money laundering.
It said funds were moved through a network of accounts in multiple jurisdictions known for financial secrecy, including the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, St Kitts and Nevis, Panama, Cyprus and Luxembourg.
The funds were then used to buy luxury assets for the family, the NCA said, with no reasonable explanation provided to the agency for where the money had come from.
A “significant” proportion was traced directly to loan agreements or promissory notes – effectively IOUs – used to conceal the theft of money from the IBA.
The NCA applied in March 2021 for a property-freezing order over the golf club and home.
The agency made no finding in relation to Hajiyeva’s knowledge of how the properties were paid for.
Her spending habits were revealed in 2018 after the Guardian and other media won a legal case forcing the publication of her shopping sprees.
It was revealed that she spent more than £16m in Harrods alone between 2006 and 2016. She appeared to treat the department store as her corner shop, spending £24,000 on tea and coffee, £10,000 on fruit and vegetables and £32,000 on Godiva chocolates.
She also spent £4.9m on Boucheron and Cartier jewellery and £300,000 on the French couture label Celine. A further £251,000 was spent in the toy department and tens of thousands on Disney princess experiences at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.
Hajiyeva denies any wrongdoing and her lawyers have said the case against her husband was politically motivated.
Tim Quarrelle, branch commander for asset denial at the NCA, said: “NCA officers worked tirelessly to track the complex movement of these funds across the international banking system, through shell companies in multiple jurisdictions, in order to ascertain their source.”
“This result comes almost six-and-a-half years after we served Mrs Hajiyeva with the first unexplained wealth order ever granted, and highlights our commitment to using all the tools at our disposal to combat the flow of illicit money into, and through, the UK.”
Lawyers for Hajiyeva said: “The settlement involved no finding of fact by the court about our client’s knowledge or state of mind, still less involvement, in relation to these properties.”
They said Hajiyeva had settled the proceedings because it had been “impossible to defend them” due to the inability to obtain documents that were “potentially crucial to the case” from her husband during his incarceration in Azerbaijan.
They said Hajiyeva and her lawyers had been denied access to her husband in prison.
