The Baku Court of Appeals has reportedly greenlit the seizure of the home of the spokesperson for the opposition Musavat party, over a bank dispute.
Mustafa Hajibayli, who is also the editor-in-chief of the Musavat-aligned news site basta.info, wrote on Wednesday that the court had sided with Yelo Bank.
Hajibayli wrote, that he had already repaid ₼60,000 ($35,000) to the bank on what was a ₼33,600 ($20,000) loan taken from the bank in 2008. ‘According to the official conclusion of the Audit Chamber on this case, the loan was repaid with an excess’, Hajibayli wrote.
He claimed that the court had based its decision not on the auditor’s conclusions, but on the conclusion of an expert from the Ministry of Justice in favour of the bank.
‘He decided to put my house up for auction in order to pay the bank another $37,000. Despite the fact that the expert admitted his mistakes in court, the decision was made illegally’, Hajibayli claimed.
He told RFE/RL that he took out the loan in 2008 to help a close friend who was facing financial difficulties. According to him, the bank demanded more money after the devaluation of the manat in 2015. Hajibayli stated that he will continue to restore his rights legally and will appeal to the Supreme Court.
Yelo Bank, formerly Nikoil Bank, was until 2022 owned by Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire and Lukoil founder Vagit Alekperov. Alekperov was sanctioned by a number of Western countries following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In 2022, control of Yelo Bank was transferred to Marina Kulishova, who has also been involved in distancing at least one other business from the sanctioned oligarch.
Aytan Farhadova
