UK pursuit of ‘unexplained wealth’ clears legal hurdle

London: The wife of a jailed Azerbaijani banker who spent millions in London´s high-end Harrods department store lost a legal challenge Wednesday against Britain´s test-case “unexplained wealth” probe. Three judges in the Court of Appeal quashed Zamira Hajiyeva´s complaint and allowed the National Crime Agency (NCA) to continue freezing her property and some assets.

Hajiyeva´s case is being watched closely for signs of success in Britain´s battle against money laundering and investment of ill-gotten gains in London property. The 56-year-old mother of three was the target of the first set of “unexplained wealth orders” (UWO) issued by the NCA in February 2018. Her husband Jahangir was jailed in 2016 for 15 years in Baku for embezzling money from the International Bank of Azerbaijan — a state-controlled finance house he headed for 15 years. Investigators suspect that the £16.3 million ($21.2 million or 19.3 million euros) she had spent at Harrods over a decade and the £22 million she invested in two London mansions were illegally obtained. She was arrested in November 2018 and then released on bail. She is currently fighting an extradition request by Azerbaijan. Hajiyeva says her husband´s trial in the oil-rich Caspian Sea nation was unfair and should not be used as grounds for the NCA´s financial information request. But Judge Nigel Davis ruled that it was “unlikely” that her husband´s status as a state employee “would have been sufficient to generate funds used to purchase” one of the two properties under review. Davis added that the financial explanations submitted by Hajiyeva´s legal team “posed more questions to the source of his wealth than it answered,” according to a transcript provided by the Law360 corporate law organisation.

NCA economic crimes department director Sarah Pritchard called the Court of Appeal ruling “a significant result”. “It will set a helpful precedent for future UWO cases,” Pritchard said in a statement. But the crime fighting agency said its immediate goal was to get Hajiyeva to cooperate.

“We are ultimately looking for Mrs Hajiyeva to comply with the original order of February 2018 to explain the source of the funds used to purchase her property, pending any further right of appeal that may granted,” NCA investigator Andy Lewis said. The NCA has issued two separate UWOs in her case.