Know Your Host: Why It Matters That Azerbaijan Is Hosting the COP29 Climate Summit

Project
Published: November 1, 2024

Banner: James O'Brien/OCCRP (source images: Alamy Stock, Mehman Huseynov)

This year’s ‘COP29’ — the world’s premier climate change conference — is about to begin in Azerbaijan.

Over 11 days of meetings, thousands of political and business leaders will enjoy the hospitality of one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt regimes. Their presence, and the visibility that accompanies such a marquee event, will advance one of the Azerbaijani government’s biggest goals: boosting its credibility and position on the global stage.  

“We consider it as a sign of respect from the international community to Azerbaijan and what we are doing,” the country’s authoritarian president, Ilham Aliyev, has said of the event, which brings together parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

For years, OCCRP has worked with local journalists to expose how the country’s small elite, centered around the ruling Aliyev family, has enriched itself by plundering the country’s wealth — often at the expense of its people.

And for years, we’ve had to report how those same journalists became political prisoners, jailed for the crime of telling the truth. The Aliyev regime’s repeated crackdowns have also targeted activists, academics, and any other dissidents who dared challenge the government line.

Our stories have also highlighted the considerable efforts Azerbaijan has taken to charm the world’s influencers, politicians, and diplomats, a topic to keep in mind as the congratulatory ceremonies kick off by the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Read on for OCCRP’s best investigative reporting on Azerbaijan — and on the regime that will be greeting the world’s distinguished guests in Baku.

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NEW STORIES

Our Latest Reporting

In the lead-up to this year’s COP29 event, which runs from November 11 to 22, 2024, we’re reporting on the summit itself.

For example, did you know that nearly every official Azerbaijani partner of the COP29 — whether the Silk Way airline or the Azersun food producer — has some tie to the country’s ruling family?

Watch this space — there are more stories to come.

CORRUPTION

Everything for the First Family

Whether it’s mining, banking, hospitality, or construction, there is hardly a major industry in Azerbaijan that hasn't been dominated by the ruling Aliyev family and their allies.

OCCRP has reported on how the family profited from a currency collapse, how it sought to buy Kyrygz gold fields, and how it appeared to siphon off a staggering $1 billion from the acquisition of a telecom company.

So it’s little surprise that over 20 years of rule has brought the Aliyevs fantastic wealth. Data from the bombshell Panama Papers investigation in 2016 revealed how the family used offshore structures and multiple layers of ownership to secretly hold a fortune.

And in 2021, the Pandora Papers investigation showed that the Aliyevs and several close associates had acquired $700 million worth of property in London. At the age of 11, President Aliyev’s son owned an entire office building. OCCRP even published a virtual walking tour of their assets. Read these stories for more.

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Aliyevs’ Secret Mining Empire

Aliyevs’ Secret Mining Empire

The First Family of Azerbaijan has taken control of some of the country’s richest gold, copper and silver deposits through a...

HUMAN RIGHTS

Jails Full of Journalists

As human rights groups have pointed out, modern Azerbaijan — ruled by the Aliyev family since its independence from the Soviet Union — has never held a single fair election. On one memorable occasion, “vote tallies” from a presidential contest were published before the polls had even opened.

The regime maintains its dominance thanks in part to its ruthless suppression of independent journalism — crackdowns that have ruined lives, torn apart families, and enabled a wider range of unchallenged human rights abuses.

Earlier this year, we reported how a group of independent journalists was jailed on absurd charges ahead of February’s presidential election. Earlier, we showed how dissidents have been targeted with super-advanced Israeli spyware.

We’ve reported how Nakhchivan, an especially secretive region ruled like a personal fiefdom by an Aliyev ally, is akin to a little North Korea in the heart of the Caucasus.

And our ‘Slaves to Progress’ project exposed how a group of foreign laborers was forced to work, against their will, for a company that built some of the Azerbaijani capital’s newest event venues — at the behest of a minister whose wife co-owned it. Read more below.

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Slaves to Progress

Slaves to Progress

Few authoritarian states have worked harder than Azerbaijan to leverage major international events to boost their image on the world stage.

REPUTATION LAUNDERING

Azerbaijan in the World

President Ilham Aliyev said recently that Azerbaijan’s selection as COP29 host was “a sign of respect from the international community,” describing it as a “big honor” for his country.

Improving its international reputation is indeed among the regime’s priorities. Aside from major international events like COP29, the European games, and the Formula 1 Grand Prix, it has also recruited others for its cause.

OCCRP has reported on American lobbyists who sang the regime’s praises and took its money and an oil and gas consultant who received mysterious financial transfers from Azerbaijan even as he helped organize a pro-regime conference for nearly a dozen members of congress.

That money, reporters found, had been sent through the Azerbaijani Laundromat, a network of offshore companies that helped move billions of dollars out of the country on behalf of Azerbaijan’s elite. Some was spent on luxurious purchases; some filled the pockets of influential people on the world stage.

A U.S. firm that lobbied for Azerbaijan received money from the Laundromat. So did European politicians, members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the husband of a senior U.N. official.

The Azerbaijani Laundromat

The Azerbaijani Laundromat

The Azerbaijani Laundromat is a complex money-laundering operation and slush fund that handled $2.9 billion over a two-year period through four shell companies registered in the UK.

Baku’s Man in America

Baku’s Man in America

A quarter-million dollars from the Azerbaijani Laundromat went to a US energy consultant of Azerbaijani origin who, for...

The Influence Machine

The Influence Machine

From 2012 to 2014, even as the Azerbaijani government made wholesale arrests of activists and journalists, members of the...