Standard victory as judge rules ‘£14m laundromat’ couple can be revealed
A glamorous millionaire DJ who ran dance parties in Ibiza and her husband are revealed today as the London couple accused in a secret justice case of using the “Azerbaijan laundromat” to bring £14 million of dirty money into Britain.
Izzat Khanim Javadova, an oligarch’s daughter who performs
as a DJ using the name Mikaela Jav, and Suleyman Javadov are accused by the
National Crime Agency of using the proceeds of corruption to finance their life
in the capital.
It is trying to seize their multi-million pound bank
accounts and has told a court that the money is being laundered in this country
after being transferred here via a complex web of transactions, including fake
invoices for vast quantities of steel, to hide its illicit origin.
The pair own several London homes between them worth
millions of pounds, including a flat in Whitehall with views over the Thames, a
riverside home in Twickenham, and an upmarket apartment in Clerkenwell.
They are also understood to own a villa overlooking the sea
in Ibiza and a luxury flat on the party island, as well as an extensive
property portfolio in Azerbaijan.
They deny any wrongdoing and had managed to persuade the
courts to keep their identities secret until now on the grounds that revealing
their names would damage their reputation.
But in a victory for the Evening Standard, which has been
fighting a court battle for nearly two years to have the veil of secrecy
lifted, an anonymity order protecting them finally expired today to allow the
couple to be named.
Ms Javadova is the cousin of Azerbaijan’s ruler Ilham Aliyev
and the daughter of a former Azerbaijan MP Jalal Aliyev, the former ruler’s
brother. She came to London at least ten years ago and was given a visa by the
Home Office because of her wealth.
She set up a London company called Love the Underground
Records and used it to stage dance parties in parties in London at venues
including Kensington Roof Gardens and numerous events in Ibiza.
She performed in many of them as the DJ Mikaela Jav and has
spoken in interviews of her love of “techno and tech house”. She has also
regularly posted glamorous images of herself on social media, including shots
of her in London and other locations including Athens.
One Christmas Eve photo, in which she is seen wearing red
lingerie wishing “Merry Xmas to all my friends!!!”, appears to have been taken
on the balcony of the pair’s Whitehall flat, while another shows in front of
Tower Bridge.
Ms Javadova’s husband Suleyman is the son of Azerbaijan’s
former deputy energy minister, Gulmammad Suleyman Javadov, although court
papers suggest he denied this while giving allegedly false evidence about his
identity to Coutts.
A forfeiture hearing at which the National Crime Agency is
seeking to seize around £6.5 million in accounts at Coutts, Barclays, Lloyds,
Metro Bank and Santander held by either Mr Javadov or Ms Javadova is due to be
begin next week.
The couple have claimed in evidence to investigators that
their wealth came from rental income from their property portfolio in
Azerbaijan.
But the National Crime Agency has told Westminster
Magistrates court that it believes the true source was corruption and that any
genuine income did not match the large sums sent to London.
“The NCA’s argument is that … they knew that what they were
receiving did not come from their tenants but from an unlawful intermediary
organisation designed to launder money,” court documents state.
“The court will be invited to infer from the evidence that
[the Javadovs] have used the services of the “Azerbaijani Laundromat” to
receive, into their UK accounts, substantial sums over the period 2007 to 2018.
“The gross amount transferred (£13.8 million over 6 years 8
months) is approximately double the amount of the profit they stated in
interview, and well over double the turnover of their rental income as declared
to Coutts.”
The court documents allege that the money sent to the
Javadovs’ accounts came via 21 “brass plate” companies operating from locations
ranging from the Seychelles and the Marshall Islands to Potters Bar and Ayr and
banks in Estonia and Latvia.
They say that six of these companies have been named
separately as part of the “Azerbaijan laundromat” scheme – under which vast
sums have been chanelled out of the former Soviet state to support the
lifestyle of the country’s ruling elite - and that they in turn had already
received received funds from other “laundromat” companies.
An earlier court hearing was told that these companies
included Baktelekom, Hilux and Polux, which together were involved in “very
big” cash transfers totalling around £500 million for supposed steel exports,
which the National Crime Agency alleges were fake transactions.
Crosspark Lines, a Scottish and Irish registered company
linked to the Azerbaijan laundromat, has also been named during court
proceedings as involved in moving money to the couple.
The Standard has previously disclosed how court documents
state that one of the companies used by the couple for their alleged money
laundering activities “chartered a private jet to take a group of seven men and
five younger female models to Ibiza”.
The legal papers say that the same company “also made
payments to a number of private schools and other educational establishments in
the UK.”
No detail has been given in court about the remainder of the
£14 million allegedly brought into Britain unlawfully or whether law enforcers
are making separate efforts to recover the money.
Publicly available documents show, however, that the London
properties owned by the pair include a riverside home in Twickenham, a
multi-million pound flat in Whitehall with views over the Thames, and another
luxury flat in Clerkenwell.
An anonymity order had protected the couple, despite
repeated efforts by the Evening Standard to have it removed, until last week
when District Judge Vanessa Baraitser approved this newspaper’s application to
have the secrecy removed.
In a ruling at Westminster Magistrates court, Judge
Baraitser also ordered that the forfeiture hearing to seize their assets should
be heard fully in public, rejecting a bid by the couple to have some of it
conducted in private.
She added that the couple, whose lawyers had tried to cite
privacy concerns to maintain secrecy, had produced no information to support
their case and that maintaining anonymity would be a “disproportionate
interference with the principle of open justice” and freedom of expression
under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The couple were then given a further chance to remain secret
by seeking permission for a High Court judicial review. But their application
for that, which had already been rejected on the papers, was refused after a
half day oral hearing before Mr Justice Lavender before a final attempt to take
their case to the Court of Appeal was rejected today in an order by Lord
Justice Singh.
He said that he had been persuaded by submissions from this newspaper
and the National Crime Agency that anonymity was no longer justified and that
the bar on naming the couple should be lifted immediately.
The decision brings to a successful end this newspaper’s
battle to have the Javadovs’ identities made public, which had turned into a
test case of the openness with which forfeiture and account freezing order
applications are conducted in court.
The victory should help to pave the way for similar
transparency in other cases based on the same legislation and shine a spotlight
on the extent of “dirty money” brought into the country and law enforcers’
efforts to address the problem.
A judge in a previous hearing, the then Chief Magistrate
Emma Arbuthnot, who is now a High Court judge, acknowledged the importance of
the Standard’s efforts, declaring in a judgment that the paper has “an
important story to tell” about the allegations against the couple.
The judge added that this newspaper had a “proper
journalistic interest” in wanting court documents about the case and “is
concerned about the flow of ‘dirty money’ into the United Kingdom.”
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