My personal blog, my thoughts.
Baku / 12.08.17 / Turan: The Monitoring Center for Political Prisoners strongly condemned the criminal investigation against the Turan News Agency on charges of tax evasion.
The human rights organization regards this as a prejudiced and politically motivated step.
Read more “Criminal Investigation against Turan Politically Motivated – Human Rights Activist”
Azerbaijani political prisoner Abbas Huseynov has been tortured in a prison (popularly known as the Gobustan prison), in which he is held and which belongs to the Azerbaijani Justice Ministry’s Penitentiary Service. Abbas Huseynov is a deputy to the leader of the Muslim Unity movement, Taleh Baghirzadeh. The torture was carried out by the prison governor, a deputy prison chief and several guards, Huseynov told his defence lawyer Yalchin Imanov. The lawyer told us about what happened in the notorious high-security prison for especially dangerous criminals, which is located 70 kilometres outside Baku.
Read more “How political prisoners are tortured in Azerbaijan”
On 8 August, Azerbaijani tax authorities launched an investigation of Turan News Agency. Local civil society activists and international human rights organizations believe this investigation is aimed at the termination of the activities of the last independent media outlet in the country. On 24 August Mehman Aliyev, the director of the news agency and a well-known journalist was sentenced to three months pretrial detention on charges of tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship and abuse of power. As a result, Turan announced that it planned to suspend its operations as of September.
Read more “Shrinking space for Azerbaijan’s last independent voices”
Statement of The Working Group on Unified List of Political Prisoners on the Detention of Mehman Aliyev and the Suspension of Turan News Agency’s Activities
The Working Group on Unified List of Political Prisoners is dismayed by the news of the detention of the director of Turan News Agency, Mehman Aliyev, and the suspension of the only remaining independent news media in Azerbaijan – Turan News Agency.
The State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan (SCC) failed to register $24.8 billion worth of imported goods from 2010-2015, resulting in a loss for the state budget of about $5 billion in taxes. The SCC blames importers, but experts say that the Prosecutor’s Office should launch an investigation.
According to the SCC, in the first ten days of April 2017 importers underreported the value of goods entering Azerbaijan by 2.4 million AZN (about $1.4 million). Noting that some individuals and legal entities had submitted false invoices to avoid tax payments, the Committee announced that it had collected an additional 895 thousand AZN in taxes and transferred the amount to the state budget.
Read more “Azerbaijan Customs Committee fails to report billions in imports”
Last week the Ministry of Taxes opened a criminal case against Turan Information Agency, an independent media outlet in Baku, alleging large-scale tax evasion. Turan’s director, Mehman Aliyev, categorically rejects the allegations and claims that the Ministry’s handling of the case violates Azerbaijan’s tax code regulations. Reporters Without Borders has condemned the Ministry’s actions as ‘persecution.’
Read more “Turan accuses Ministry of Taxes of violating tax code”
No one can deny the progressive development of history. The historical process changes people, society, morals and laws. What was forbidden becomes allowed. Even honorable. I will not remind you of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now even little children laugh at the sacred books of curses against you know who.
Gay and lesbian people, as well as transgender people, go through government and parliamentary corridors with herds.
People with a traditional orientation begin to feel flawed in the society of civilized people.
The past two years have seen a flurry of analyses on Azerbaijan’s moves to whitewash its dictatorial image for American audiences. Slathered in hydrocarbon profits, the autocratic government of Ilham Aliyev has unleashed spin-doctors, duped reporters, and led one of the most brazen pushes to abuse American lobbying loopholes of any foreign government. All of this, while Azerbaijan’s First Family has taken rank advantage of offshore avenues and shell corporations to bilk unknowing taxpayers.
Read more “Azerbaijan’s American Media Manipulation by Casey Michel”
Analysis of banks tied to the three children of President Ilham Aliyev shows that the trio still hold controlling shares in four banks from which they collected $82 million in profits in 2016. Overall, the Azerbaijan banking sector lost $960 million in 2016.
BAKU, Azerbaijan (A.W.)— On July 20, an Azerbaijani court sentenced Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin, who was arrested last December, to three years in prison on a charge related to his 2011 and 2012 visits to Artsakh.