If you’re traveling all the way to Azerbaijan to attend the world’s most important climate change conference, you might as well do it in style.
At least 5,000 attendees of the United Nations’ massive COP29 event, set to take place in the country’s capital of Baku later this month, will do just that. They’ll stay in ultra-luxurious rooms at the Sea Breeze Resort on the Caspian Sea, with access to a seven-kilometer-long beach, over 50 bars and restaurants, and 60 swimming pools.
The topic of the day being climate, there will also be time for symbolism: According to a state news outlet, “heads of Azerbaijani and international companies, politicians, and cultural figures” will plant trees in the resort’s new landscape park.
But what these visitors may not know is that the entire 500-hectare Sea Breeze complex belongs to Emin Agalarov, the former son-in-law of Azerbaijan’s authoritarian president, Ilham Aliyev. Government procurement records show that he received a $5.2-million government contract to host COP29 guests, without any competitive tender process. (The contract was first reported by independent Azerbaijani news outlet Abzas Media.)
Screenshot of YouTube video by @sobchak
Emin Agalarov shows off an architectural rendering of his Sea Breeze resort in an interview on October 7, 2024.
This is emblematic of COP29, the twenty-ninth annual U.N. conference on tackling climate change, and the first to be held in a former Soviet republic. In fact, reporters found, nearly every local company named as one of the conference’s “official partners” is owned by the country's ruling family or someone with reported business ties to them.
These COP29 partners, which include a conglomerate owned by the president’s daughters, will benefit from exposure to an international audience, access to a special exhibition zone, and sponsorship opportunities.
The COP gathering brings together parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to negotiate issues including emissions levels. Since the first one took place in Berlin in 1995, a different nation has organized the conference every year, hosting tens of thousands of participants, along with heads of state and non-governmental organizations representing business, the environmental movement, youth, and other sectors.
But in a report released today, “COP Co-Opted,” two pro-transparency advocacy groups, Transparency International and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, raised concerns that the framework convention lacked “guardrails against corporate and fossil fuel influence in the host country’s organization of COP.”
“Without guidelines for who can be a COP partner and how conflict of interest should be managed, it is very easy for corrupt regimes to make sure their family and friends can use the COP to green- and whitewash their records and directly benefit from the COP,” said Brice Böhmer, who leads Transparency International’s work on climate change and governance.
[I]t is very easy for corrupt regimes to make sure their family and friends can use the COP to green- and whitewash their records and directly benefit from the COP.
Brice Böhmer, Transparency International
This year’s choice of Azerbaijan has also been criticized for awarding the world’s top climate conference to a major oil and gas producer. Azerbaijan is also the most authoritarian country ever to host a COP, behind even Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, according to rankings by human rights group Freedom House.
Six journalists from Abzas Media, the independent Azerbaijani news site that first reported Agalarov’s receipt of the no-bid hospitality tender, are currently languishing in prison on trumped-up political charges. Their imprisonment is part of a wider crackdown on free speech and civil society unleashed by the Azerbaijani government this year.
Meanwhile, in a speech written for a United Nations pre-conference event, President Ilham Aliyev said he considered “the unanimous support extended to Azerbaijan as a sign of the international community’s trust in our country.”
Previous reporting on Azerbaijan by OCCRP and other outlets has demonstrated the fantastic wealth amassed by President Aliyev, his wife, his children, and several other relatives — and of the opportunities that often present themselves for those in their inner circle.
“There are no specific good governance requirements for countries registering their interest in hosting U.N. climate conferences, so countries with autocratic and corrupt governments can easily take the reins,” Transparency International and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective noted in their new report.
Emin Agalarov started buying up land for his Sea Breeze resort in 2007 — a year after he married Leyla Aliyeva, President Aliyev’s eldest daughter. (The two were divorced in 2015.)
In a recent YouTube interview with a Russian media personality, Agalarov told a somewhat different story of how his Sea Breeze resort came to host COP29 visitors. In his own words, he still came off well.
Agalarov did not mention receiving $5.2 million from the state, instead suggesting that the government had given him a loan to enable him to build more accommodation for COP guests.
“They came to me from the administration and asked how many people I could accommodate in the Sea Breeze,” he said.
“I quickly understood what I could do, and made the government an offer that, for the COP, I could mobilize and refurbish 3,000 apartments. I got a loan for this, with the responsibility of finishing it and accommodating 5,000 people for free. So, this allowed me to refurbish practically 2,000 additional apartments by next summer. That is, this year they’re being used by COP, and next year I get 2,000 apartments.”
Agalarov did not respond to requests for comment.
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An official brochure promises prospective COP29 partners “high-profile exposure [that] positions your organisation as a leader in climate action and sustainability, enhancing your reputation among international audiences.”
The first official COP29 partners were announced on September 13 and included leading food producer Azersun and PASHA Holding, a conglomerate spanning interests in banking, insurance, and construction.
These companies are billed as “Green Zone” partners, referring to a special exhibition space described on the official conference website as a “melting pot,” where accredited and non-accredited delegates, including members of the public and representatives from business, media and civil society, will be able to mix freely “to make their perspectives known.”
None of the companies named in this story responded to requests for comment. Azerbaijan’s COP29 Presidency team also did not respond to questions.
Heike Schroeder, a professor of environmental governance at the University of East Anglia who has attended several recent COP conferences, said that COP corporate partnerships were a “rather new development” that began in the past few years.
“Of course, it’s a huge business opportunity,” she said. “But all of it has nothing to do with being environmental.”
The newly selected partners might disagree: Several have issued press statements on how the COP event will help them improve their sustainability by creating opportunities for dialogue with “global leaders.”
“COP29 will be instrumental in advancing PASHA Holding’s sustainability efforts,” said the company’s deputy board chairman, Mir Jamal Pashayev, in a press release published on the conference’s official website.
PASHA Holding belongs to Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, the two adult daughters of President Ilham Aliyev, and Pashayev is a cousin of Azerbaijan’s first lady and vice president, Mehriban Aliyeva.
Abdolbari Gozal, the chairman of Azersun Holding, COP29’s “Sustainable Growth Partner,” said in the same press release that the company’s selection was “a testament to Azersun’s unwavering commitment to sustainability.”
“We look forward to the engagements we will have in the Green Zone”, he added.
Gozal’s nephew, Hassan Gozal, who has worked closely with him on his various business ventures, was also the director of three companies set up in the British Virgin Islands in the name of the Aliyeva sisters in 2008, according to an investigation by the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists.
Four more official COP29 partners were announced on September 17 and 20. Among them are cargo operator Silk Way West Airlines and a textiles firm called GILTEX.
As COP29’s “Global Air Cargo Partner,” Silk Way has been tasked with “transporting essential materials and supplies” to the conference.
“This role highlights the airline’s contribution to achieving global environmental objectives,” the company said in a press release.
The airline is ultimately owned by a former state official, Zaur Akhundov, but it has also been linked to the first family in the past through a sister company: A 2010 investigation by Radio Free Europe found that Arzu Aliyeva, the president’s younger daughter, was one of three owners of Silk Way Bank, the former financial arm of Silk Way Group, which the airline is also part of.
COP29’s “Textile Partner,” GILTEX, which controls up to 70 percent of the local textile market, was part of a conglomerate called Gilan Holding until last year. A 2018 OCCRP investigation revealed that President Aliyev’s daughters had a majority stake in Gilan Holding through a company registered in the United Arab Emirates, alongside the children of Kamaladdin Heydarov, Azerbaijan’s Emergency Situations Minister. (Heydarov is also a member of the COP29 organizing committee.)
Gilan Holding was liquidated in 2023. As Azerbaijan’s government restricts public access to information about the owners and shareholders of Azerbaijani companies, reporters were unable to verify who is behind GILTEX. But in 2022, OCCRP member center Meydan TV reported that many companies that formed part of Gilan Holding had started being transferred to the first-family-owned PASHA Holding.
Along with these private companies, COP29 has also named two Azerbaijani state companies as partners: SOCAR Green and Bank ABB, previously known as the International Bank of Azerbaijan.
SOCAR Green, the event’s “Energy Transition Partner,” is a clean energy subsidiary of Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, which plays an outsized role in the oil-producing nation’s economy.
SOCAR has also played a large role in the COP event, with several organizing committee members having ties to the state oil company. In their “COP Co-Opted” report, Transparency International and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective raised concerns that the oil company could use its involvement in COP29 to further its business interests.
“The prominent role of SOCAR in Azerbaijan’s state structure and the autocratic nature of the government make it difficult to distinguish SOCAR’s interests from those of the Azerbaijani host government,” the groups said.
As the event’s “Principal Banking Partner,” ABB said it planned to use “the insights and partnerships forged at COP29” to “advanc[e] financial solutions that drive environmental, social, and economic stability.”
ABB rebranded in 2021, but under its former name, the International Bank of Azerbaijan, it made unflattering headlines for the central role it played in the $2.9-billion money laundering scandal known as the Azerbaijani Laundromat. An account at the bank was used as a key conduit for moving a large portion of these funds.
The bank’s former chairman was jailed in 2016 for stealing almost $3 billion from the institution. His wife, who lived in the U.K., was later served with the country’s first-ever “unexplained wealth order,” with British authorities demanding that she prove her vast wealth had a legal origin. She later agreed to forfeit a $17.8-million mansion and a golf club to the British state.
