Maltese taxpayers could be losing tens of millions of dollars per year in an energy deal with Azerbaijan, according to expert analysis of leaked files.

A whistleblower gave a cache of data to Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese investigative journalist who was killed by a car bomb last October.

She was not able to publish her findings before her death. But the leaked material was then shared with the Daphne Project, which has been working to complete her reporting. The consortium of 45 investigative reporters from 18 news organizations in 15 countries, including the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Guardian, was organized by Forbidden Stories.

Three energy experts in London have examined the files, which contain pricing information that Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has so far refused to publish.

Read more “Maltese Taxpayers Losing Out in Gas Deal with Azerbaijan”

A prominent lawyer spoke openly about the beating of his client while in custody, perhaps thinking that it could stir change in Azerbaijan.

Action was taken in the authoritarian country, but not against the police suspected of carrying out the beating. Instead, it is the whistle-blowing lawyer who finds himself being punished.

Shortly after speaking out, Yalcin Imanov, who has defended a number of government critics, was suspended by the Azerbaijani Bar Association. He awaits a final decision this month on whether he will be formally disbarred.

Read more “Risky Business: Defending Azerbaijan’s Opposition”

2018 is an election year in Azerbaijan. The authorities may have the streets on lockdown, but the fight against dissent in cyberspace is just beginning.

Last week, somebody broke into MeydanTV’s Facebook. By Monday, the Berlin-based online news platform finally restored its access to the page — but had lost years of posts and nearly 100,000 subscribers (the publication had experienced a series of DDoS attacks on its site earlier in January). Anybody who knows the parlous state of freedom of speech in Azerbaijan knows of MeydanTV. The site’s independent journalism has won it no friends in the South Caucasus state, where its journalists are routinely harassed.

Read more “Azerbaijan’s authoritarianism goes digital”

The arrest of an Azerbaijani journalist in Ukraine marks a fresh instance of free-media-wary Azerbaijan having a critical reporter apprehended outside its borders.

Fikret Huseynli, who survived a beating and stabbing in his native Azerbaijan a decade ago, was arrested on October 14 at Boryspil International Airport in Kyiv as he was about to board a fight to Dusseldorf. He managed to alert his friends about his situation via Facebook before Ukrainian police took him into custody. A local court must still consider Azerbaijan’s extradition request, Ukrainian rights activists report.

Read more “Azerbaijan: Seeking to Arrest Critical Journalists throughout the Ex-USSR”