Transparency Azerbaijan to shut down amidst controversy involving Tourism Agency

Transparency International’s (TI) offices in Azerbaijan are reportedly shutting down, amidst state media criticism of the organisation and one of its founders, whose relative was ‘severely reprimanded’ by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for leaking official documents.

On Wednesday, state-run news agency APA reported that the General Assembly of the TI Anti-Corruption Public Union, a TI-accredited national branch, has decided to dissolve itself, citing its executive director, Alimammad Nuriyev.

The TI chapter in Azerbaijan was established in 2001 and is focused on researching corruption in the country.

The APA article went on to accuse TI of demonstrating a ‘biased stance’ against Azerbaijan, ‘without conducting comprehensive investigations and without reflecting the government’s position in its reports’.

‘The Azerbaijani government’s repeated statements that such reports are biased have not resulted in any change in the activities of this organization regarding Azerbaijan’, APA wrote.

In 2023, TI’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks countries based on corruption issues, gave Azerbaijan a rank of 154 out of 180 countries with a score of 22 out of 100.

Azerbaijan’s Corruption Perception Index scores have consistently hovered just around 30 out of 100 since 2012.

‘In its latest report, Transparency International again included biased information about Azerbaijan. Interestingly, the report uses only general statements, and no allegations are substantiated by facts’, APA wrote.

The Tourism Agency and leaked correspondences

The APA article also briefly singles out a member of the organisation, Rana Safaraliyeva, saying that she was a founding member of TI’s Azerbaijan chapter and had served as its executive director until 2019.

In a subsection dedicated to Safaraliyeva, APA goes on to write that she is the mother-in-law of the chair of the State Tourism Agency, Fuad Naghiyev, ‘who was severely reprimanded by President Ilham Aliyev’s order yesterday’.

The ‘reprimand’ was published as a decree on the president’s website, briefly stating that Aliyev was reprimanding Naghiyev for the ‘shortcomings he has made in his work’.

They cited Lent as saying that Naghiyev was reprimanded over allegations of leaking official correspondence.

‘The Tourism Agency has become a nest for people who have worked with or collaborated with the Transparency International organisation, which has always taken an adversarial stance towards Azerbaijan’, Lent wrote, before also highlighting Naghiyev’s ties to Safaraliyeva.

‘Some individuals [Safaraliyeva] mentored in this organisation are now working at the State Tourism Agency. It is no surprise that they have become influential figures within the agency.’

In turn, APA wrote that Naghiyev’s ‘entourage has been continuously leaking service information to various organisations and individuals’.

‘They even sent internal correspondence between state bodies to foreign embassies in Azerbaijan’, the article stated.

On Tuesday, Lent cited sources as saying that a criminal investigation would be launched into ‘a number of people working in the agency, including Fuad Naghiyev’.

According to Qafqazinfo, the Tourism Agency’s chief of staff, Kanan Gasimov, was dismissed from his post on Wednesday following Aliyev’s ‘reprimand’ of Naghiyev. The outlet has additionally reported that Gasimov worked with TI Azerbaijan between 2009–2014.

Reports of TI’s departure from Azerbaijan came amidst an apparent purge of international organisations in the country.

On Tuesday, Parviz Baghirov, head of the National Erasmus+ Office in Azerbaijan at the European Commission, wrote on social media that all activities under the Erasmus+ programme were effectively on an unofficial hold.

Earlier in the week, pro-government media outlet Caliber reported that the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were told ‘they must leave’ Azerbaijan.

UNDP, UNHCR, and ICRC ‘told to leave’ Azerbaijan

The Azerbaijani government has consistently used state media to discredit civil society organisations prior to shutting them down.

OC MediaXandie (Alexandra) Kuenning