Aliyev’s cousin arrested in Greece on drug charges

On 30 December, Greek police arrested Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s first cousin, DJ Izzatkhanim Javadova, during an drug raid at a party held in a luxury villa near Athens.

According to Meydan TV, police announced that 45 packages of cocaine, ecstasy, crystal meth, other drugs, and a safe containing around €45,000 ($46,000) were found in the ‘bedroom’ of the party’s ‘organiser’, Javadova.

According to local Greek media, a total of 10 people were arrested at the party, including two police officers and a judicial police officer who had been tasked with ‘guarding’ the party.

Javadova, 44, is expected to apologise today to an investigator and prosecutor, along with four other co-defendants. Yesterday, five of those accused of drug possession were released without conditions after providing apologies.

The daughter of the late Azerbaijani MP Jalal Aliyev — the brother of the former President of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, and the uncle of the present President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev — Javadova was raised in Russia. In 2015, she began playing music under the stage name Mikaela, her daughter’s name, at parties in Ibiza, Greece, and Thailand.

Azerbaijani authorities have not yet commented on the case.

Connections to the Azerbaijani Laundromat

In 2021, British authorities tied Javadova and her husband Suleyman Javadov to the Azerbaijani Laundromat, a general-purpose financial vehicle used by the Azerbaijani elite to make money abroad.

According to an investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) released that same year, the Javadov couple were suspected of receiving almost £14 million ($17 million) from the proceeds of ‘corruption, theft, or embezzlement’.

The report highlighted that while previous investigations had shown that many high-level Azerbaijanis used the Laundromat, Javadova ‘was the first member of the ruling Aliyev family known to have done so’.

Though not high-profile figures in Azerbaijan, both Izzatkhanim Javadova and Suleyman Javadov have family ties to Azerbaijani politicians — Suleyman Javadov’s father was a Deputy Energy Minister from 2014 until 2020. Accordingly, Suleyman Javadov should have been recognised as a ‘politically exposed person’, or PEP, which should have subjected him to extra scrutiny under anti-money laundering regulations.

According to the OCCRP, however, Javadov told the UK bank Coutts when opening an account that he ‘was not related to the Deputy Minister of Energy, and that he was simply a namesake’.

The National Crime Agency later secured a settlement agreement with Suleyman Javadov to forfeit £4 million ($5 million) they suspected to be ‘the proceeds of a crime’. The couple claimed that they were unaware the forfeited money had passed through the Azerbaijani Laundromat before entering their accounts.