The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has reported that a British lawyer was fined £32,500 ($42,000) for ‘failing to adequately vet’ funds and linked to Azerbaijan’s former National Security Minister, Eldar Mahmudov.
On Friday, the OCCRP reported that lawyer Rory Fordyce was fined for his handling of funds belonging to Anar Mahmudov, the former minister’s 41-year-old son.
They said that the funds were used to purchase expensive property in southern England, citing the UK’s Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, which fined Fordyce.
In addition to the fine, Fordyce was barred from holding any legal management or compliance roles for five years and was ordered to pay £50,000 ($66,000) in legal costs, the OCCRP reported.
The tribunal described Fordyce’s vetting of the funds as ‘rudimentary, piecemeal, and naive’, noting that the breaches occurred between 2013 and 2015 and involved ‘two high-value transfers from members of the Mahmudov family into a client account at Taylor Fordyce, the law firm where Fordyce was a director’.
The OCCRP wrote that the Mahmodovs transferred more than £1.9 million ($2.5 million) in April 2015 to purchase the property. Reviewing land registry documents, the OCCRP found that Continental Properties, an off-shore registered in St. Kitts and Nevis, purchased commercial real estate in Newbury, southern England, worth around the same fee transferred to Fordyce.
‘The company was listed as being “care of” Taylor Fordyce in the records shortly after the transaction’, wrote the OCCRP, adding that the property included several commercial units, including a Pizza Hut, a tutoring centre, a bakery chain, and a Salvation Army donation store.
The OCCRP noted that the UK’s offshore ownership register did not include ultimate beneficiaries, citing British laws as exempting trust-held firms from public disclosure.
They wrote that they reached out to Anar Mahmudov and other members of his family for comment on whether they were the beneficial owners of the company, but received no response as of publication.
The OCCRP cited the tribunal as saying that Fordyce told authorities that the company was ultimately owned by Continental Trust, which was allegedly created by Mahmudov, who was not a ‘director, shareholder, or beneficial owner of Continental Properties’. They added that the tribunal found that the funds originated from Nargiz Mahmudova, Anar Mahmudov’s sister.
Eldar Mahmudov was the subject of a 2020 OCCRP investigation which found that his family had built a European business and real estate empire worth at least €100 million ($120 million). The anti-corruption investigative project noted that neither Continental Properties nor the Newbury property purchase were mentioned in that investigation.
Nate Ostiller
