BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN
Continuing the series of articles we published in the last two weeks about corruption in Azerbaijan, we wish now to reveal additional scandalous details about funds deposited in a Malta bank by family members of Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev.
Interestingly, the Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, has emerged at the center of Azerbaijan’s financial scandals. London’s The Guardian newspaper reported last week that Muscat’s wife, Michelle, had received large amounts of money from Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of Aliyev.
Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia of Malta revealed “a series of payments, in the form of loans, had been routed to Egrant [a Panama-registered shell company which belongs to the wife of Malta’s Prime Minister]. The largest, for $1.07 million, was allegedly made in March of last year. They are claimed to have come from an account at Pilatus bank belonging to Al Sahra FZCO. And the owner of Al Sahra was allegedly the daughter of Azerbaijan’s leader, Ilham Aliyev,”
