Azerbaijan has arrested petrol tycoon Adnan Ahmadzada, a former SOCAR official. While the authorities have yet to reveal the charges pressed against him, pro-government media has claimed that he was detained for contaminating Azerbaijani petrol with other sources, in addition to highlighting his alleged ties to Russia.
Baku’s Sabail District Court remanded Ahmadzada to four months of pre-trial detention on Saturday, reportedly for contaminating Azerbaijani petrol with crude from different sources.
Ahmadzada’s lawyer, Shaig Mirzayev, has refused to reveal the charges pressed against his client.
‘When a case is under investigation, the entire process must be kept confidential’, he said, adding that the trial was being held behind closed doors.
Mirzayev added that Ahmadzada was in good health, and had not been subjected to physical violence as of the date of publication.
However, despite the authorities not officially disclosing his charges, several Azerbaijani pro-government media outlets have covered his case and dealings extensively.
According to the pro-government media outlet Qafqazinfo, Ahmadzada is accused of undermining economic security and, specifically, embezzlement on an especially large scale. The criminal case is being handled by Azerbaijan’s State Security Service (SSS).
Several other outlets have also reported that Ahmadzada might be implicated in mixing Azeri Light Oil with other products.
News of Azerbaijani Light Oil being contaminated surfaced in July, with Reuters reporting that Austrian energy group OMV has found organic chloride contamination in Azerbaijani products.
Azeri Light oil prices dropped, and its shipment from Turkey’s BTC Ceyhan terminal was disrupted.
However, the pro-government media outlet APA cited BP as saying that crude products at Ceyhan meet accepted standards, with the head of BP Azerbaijan’s press service telling the outlet that the issue had ‘already been resolved’.
Qafqazinfo reported that contamination affected the price of the Azeri Light crude oil fell from $75 to $68.31, a decrease of $6.69 per barrel. As a result, Azerbaijan’s export revenues for July fell by $2.01 billion.
In the same article, entitled ‘How did Ahmadzada become Russified?’, Qafqazinfo went into details about Ahmadzada’s alleged connections with Russia, and how he had aided Russia and Iran in evading Western sanctions.
In response to pro-government media coverage of the case, Ahmadzada’s lawyer, Mirzayev, told OC Media that ‘what was written in the media is their responsibility. I cannot say more about it’. He added that Ahmadzada was willing to cooperate with the investigative authorities.
An expansive network
According to a variety of media sources from Azerbaijan and abroad, Ahmadzada appears to be deeply embedded in Azerbaijan’s petrol business and was involved in transporting Russian petrol to the EU.
Caviar-diplomacy.net has suggested that Ahmadzada was in-the-know about SOCAR’s inner dealings, having close connections with several high-ranking figures in the company, including former SOCAR head Rovnaq Abdullayev, through the latter’s cousin, Anar Alizada (formerly Aliyev). According to the outlet, Ahmadzada and Alizada are co-founders of Socar Trading, SA, a subsidiary company of SOCAR, which is registered in Switzerland and exports crude products from Turkey’s Ceyhan terminal.
While Adnan Ahmadzada had formally left SOCAR Trading, anti-corruption project Anticor has reported that his elder brother, Khayal Ahmadzada, is currently serving as the company’s Vice President of Business Development.
The Malta Herald has also claimed that although Ahmadzada was no longer a SOCAR employee, he continued to play a key role in its international transportation and sale of petroleum products, through the companies ABDA Invest Holding and Alkagesta. According to the Maltese news outlet, Alkagesta, which was registered in Malta in 2018, is the largest bunkering company supplying marine fuels in the country, and is currently being investigated by the EU and UK authorities for trading Russian oil in Europe.
According to the Azerbaijani independent media outlet Meydan TV, Alkagesta was founded by Kamran Aghayev, who is a ‘close relative’ of Ahmadzada. The outlet wrote that Aghayev is the director of Caspian Oil and Gas, which ‘not only has offices in Azerbaijan and the UAE, but also in Moscow’. They have additionally cited the company’s website as listing Russia’s largest petrol company, Tatneft, and petrochemical company Sibur as its strategic partners.
Earlier in September, the EU’s sanctions against Russia quietly extended to the Azerbaijani state-owned STAR Refinery in Turkey, with Brussels telling OC Media that the refinery was subject to a ban for processing Russian crude oil.
Imports from the refinery are subject to a ban under the EU’s 18th sanctions package, adopted in July 2025. The package bans the import of refined products made from Russian crude if processed in third countries as an anti-circumvention measure.
EU foreign affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper confirmed to OC Media that STAR, jointly owned by the Azerbaijani government and its state oil company SOCAR, was covered by the package.
Rasmus Canbäck
