Azerbaijan: oil, gas, and caviar diplomacy
Key lobbyists: The European Azerbaijan Society (TEAS), | APCO PR | CSM Strategic PR
Country’s Democracy Index position 2013: (Authoritarian regime) [133]
Azerbaijan: oil, gas, and caviar diplomacy
Azerbaijan is run “in a similar manner to the feudalism found in Europe during the Middle Ages… with general agreement among leading families to divide the spoils,” according to a confidential US intelligence report leaked in 2010. The country has not had a competitive election since the father of the current President, Ilham Aliyev, came to power in 1993 following a coup, and is one of the most corrupt in the world.
The country’s oil and gas is of increasingly important strategic value for the European Union, and there are on-going negotiations to create an EU-Azerbaijan association agreement, which would strengthen political and trade ties. The regime has spent large sums of money lobbying and building relations with politicians in the EU, from funding cultural centers, to lavish trips, to political events. Controversially, in 2014 Azerbaijan held the Presidency of the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights body.
Azerbaijan’s already abysmal human rights record further deteriorated during the 2013 Presidential election, which Ilham Aliyev won with 84.5% of the vote. Human rights activists, political opponents, and journalists were detained, beaten, and tortured. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) sent election monitors in 2013 who found “intimidation, the imprisonment of opposition figures, a lack of media freedom,” and concluded the “evidence of systemic fraud was overwhelming”.
Caviar diplomacy and whitewashed elections
A report by think tank the European Stability Initiative is heavily critical of European politicians wooed by what one senior Azerbaijani policymaker calls “caviar diplomacy”:
Many deputies are regularly invited to Azerbaijan and generously paid…. In a normal year, at least 30 to 40 would be invited, some of them repeatedly. People are invited to conferences, events, sometimes for summer vacations. These are real vacations and there are many expensive gifts. Gifts are mostly expensive silk carpets, gold and silver items, drinks, caviar and money. In Baku, a common gift is 2 kg of caviar.
This gives a curious context to the story of how both members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and a delegation of MEPs praised Azerbaijan’s 2013 elections, in embarrassing contrast to the OSCE’s conclusions of “systemic fraud”. At a joint press conference, the head of the MEP delegation Pino Arlacchi declared the elections “free and transparent”, as did Robert Walter representing PACE, a British MP and member since 2010 of ‘Conservative Friends of the Azerbaijan’.
After questions were raised about the report, the European Parliament ethics committee found that six of the MEPs who travelled to Azerbaijan to monitor the elections violated the new code of conduct in failing to declare the trip. Euractiv reports, “Some of [the MEPs] ‘forgot’ to tell Parliament that they had been invited by the Azeri government and did not declare the trip on their website…. The committee is also questioning whether some MEPs were remunerated for this task, on top of the paid trip.”
When the head of the delegation MEP Pino Arlacchi was asked afterwards in an internal EP meeting why his conclusions on the election were so different to that of the OSCE he replied it was to “defend” Italian interests in the region (presumably related to an energy corridor). The MEPs questioned were Ivo Vajgl (liberal) from Slovenia; Kristiina Ojuland (liberal) from Estonia; Oleg Valjalo, from Croatia (centre-left); Jacek Wlosowicz from Poland and Slavi Binev, a Bulgarian (both Europe of Freedom and Democracy group); and Nick Griffin, a British extreme-right MEP. However, no punitive action was taken.
According to Der Spiegel, Berlin’s Society for the Promotion of German-Azerbaijani Relations (GEFDAB), is “essentially a lobbying group funded by Azerbaijan”. It funded 36 German Election Observation Group trips, and helped fund observers from the Brussels-based European Academy of Election Observation, which sent 135 MPs and political experts from 24 European countries. MEP Alexandra Thein, funded by GEFDAB, found that the vote complied with “the basic and democratic rules of a free and inde pendent election.”
A mysterious advocacy group, lavish parties and trips for politicians
A seemingly independent advocacy association, The European Azerbaijan Society (TEAS) is one of the bodies that organizes trips for MEPs and other European officials to Azerbaijan. For example in 2011 they funded trips by Viscount and Baroness Eccles, members of PACE. They also helped fund a trade trip by British MP Robert Walters who in 2013 acted as an election monitor (see above).
TEAS is a UK-registered, pan-European lobby group with offices in Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, and Baku. It is chaired by Tale Heydarov, the London-based son of Kamaladdin Heydarov who is one of President Ilham Aliyev’s inner circle, the Minister for Emergency Situations and business tycoon. While TEAS says it has no funding from the Azerbaijani Government, according to US intelligence cables, “its talking points very much reflect the goals and objectives of the GOAJ [Government of Azerbaijan].”
According to TEAS’ website its Public Affairs departments in Brussels and London work to “increase awareness about Azerbaijan amongst key opinion formers, key decision-makers and other political, academic and civil society stakeholders… TEAS works with parties across the full political spectrum in the UK, France, Germany, Brussels and other EU nation states and stakeholders.” TEAS Brussels is run by Roman Huna, former Programme Advisor of the Council of Europe’s Directorate General of Legal Affairs. Veteran British lobbyist Lionel Zetter is TEAS’ global Director, while its Director of Communications is former Burson Marsteller and Edelman employee Leon Cook, who focuses on “raising awareness of Azerbaijan as an investment destination and its energy offering with international energy consortia amongst policy stakeholders in the EU and beyond.”
Zetter is also Senior Counsel at international PR firm APCO, with global headquarters in Washington and its EMEA office based in Brussels. In April 2014, APCO signed a two-month contract in the US worth $50,000 to bolster the image of Azerbaijan. APCO London, where Zetter is based, lists The European Azerbaijan Society as one of its clients in the UK’s Public Relations Consultants’ Association register.
TEAS Brussels office’s mission is “to raise awareness about Azerbaijan, and to develop relationships with key stakeholders in the European Commission, the European Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament – as well as with civil society.” It also mentions the trade ties under negotiation: “Azerbaijan has established strong relations with the European Union… and the opening of negotiations on Association Agreements will accelerate this process.” Raising awareness of the contested region of NagornoKarabakh is also part of its work.
TEAS organizes events such as a 2013 meeting entitled ‘Europe 2020: Focusing on the Energy Partnership with Azerbaijan’ held in the European Parliament, co-organised by MEP Inese Vaidere. Roman Huna, head of TEAS Belgium, said of this event in the Parliament that his organization “has established itself as a credible platform for information with regard to the South Caucasus”. Speakers included MEPs, the Azeri ambassador, and Brendan Devlin, Advisor on Gas Policy, for the European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy. Meanwhile TEAS offices from London to Berlin are notorious for the lavish parties they throw for national politicians; TEAS also donates generously to national political parties.
Europe’s cultural gems
The Heydar Aliyev Foundation is a charitable fund run by first lady Mehriban Aliyeva, which has funded renovations in the Louvre, Versailles Palace, the Berlin City Palace, and the Cathedral in Strasbourg, the city where the Council of Europe is headquartered.
Olympic dreams
CSM Strategic, the London-based consultancy for global sporting events worked on Baku’s bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games, as did PR giant Burson Marsteller in Brussels, the latter extolling Azerbaijan’s “Olympic values of respect, excellence and fair play.” Although this bid ended in failure, the European Olympic Committee (EOC) has since awarded Baku the honour of hosting the very first European Games in 2015. CSM Strategic, whose Executive Director is Sebastian Coe, a British sports personality and life peer in the House of Lords, says his company, “played a leading role in bringing these Games to Baku. It introduced the idea to the EOC’s advisors in March 2012 and since then has worked closely with both the EOC and Baku in helping to bring the concept to reality.” There was no competing bid.
Rachida Dati MEP – a close friend of the Azerbaijan dictatorship?
Former Minister for Sarkozy and now an MEP, Rachida Dati of France appears to be one of Azerbaijan’s best friends. Declaring the country “an example of democracy for other Dati co-organized a conference in 2011 with Mehriban Aliyeva, whose Heydar Aliyev Foundation funded the festivities. The event held in Paris was called ‘Azerbaijan: a strategic partner for energy security in Europe’ – in attendance were Azerbaijani Ministers, European politicians and energy company heads, including Jean-François Cirelli VicePresident of GDF-Suez, and Elshad Nasirov, Vice-President of Azer state oil company SOCAR. This was followed by a 400-seat dinner for politicians, businesspeople, and celebrities at the Rodin Museum, where Dati and head of GDF-Suez Gérard Mestrallet were pictured together. The event covered significant gas discoveries in Absheron, Azerbaijan, as well as the opening of negotiations between the EU and Azerbaijan on access to Caspian gas, something GDF-Suez is very much in favour of. In 2012 GDF-Suez, Total, and SOCAR developed the Absheron fields.
The regime regards the success of the Games as a way to raise the country’s profile internationally. Yet the crackdown on human rights has escalated even further in the run up. A leading Azerbaijani human rights activist, Leyla Yunus, who had called for a boycott of the Games, has been detained (as has her husband) and beaten in detention. Forty thousand Baku residents will be evicted and their homes destroyed to make way for a ‘green zone’ for the Games.
Concerns have been raised by Friends of the Earth and Corporate Europe Observatory over media reports of Dati’s dealings with GDF-Suez: they raised a potential conflict of interest over her work on the Parliament’s Economic Affairs and Monetary Affairs committee (ECON) and the Industry, Research and Energy committee (ITRE). GDF-Suez has refused to confirm or deny whether Dati is working for them. In April 2014, Gerald Häfner MEP, then Chair of the Code of Conduct advisory committee in the European Parliament, noted: “[Rachida Dati MEP] was completely inactive for a long time, and then she suddenly started to do a huge amount of work on energy, and strangely enough, everything that she does seems to correspond exactly to the interest of one particular industry lobby, namely Gaz De France [GDF-Suez]. At one time a publicist admitted that she was acting on behalf of Gaz De France and specifically stated the amount she got in payment for that; and that case was… recommended for an official investigation.”
“Geostrategic importance”
Glocal Communications is a “Brussels-based European affairs and strategic communications consultancy” run by Demir Murat Seyrek, whose biggest client for 2013 was the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan. According to the EU Observer, “Boutique PR firm Glocal Communications organises seminars with MEPs about Azerbaijan’s ‘geostrategic’ importance.”
The Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the Kingdom of Belgium was formerly listed in the EU’s Transparency Register as a client generating €50,000. The activities of Glocal Communications are listed as including: “Meetings with MEPs and their assistants; Meetings with representatives of the EU institutions; Organisation of events at the EP; Committee Meetings.”
One of Glocal’s other clients is DCI Group, listed as paying €50,000 to Glocal Communications. In 2012 US PR company DCI Group signed a $20,000 a month contract for strategic media, PR, and outreach focusing on “Azerbaijan’s energy resources” and its strategic role as part of the “northern distribution network” that supplies US troops in Afghanistan. However, it is not clear from the register whether DCI’s commission of Glocal in Brussels was Azerbaijan-related. When asked to confirm his lobbying activities by CEO, Mr Seyrek replied “F*** off.”
Glitzy connections
The German PR firm Consultum Communications set up a glitzy independence celebration for Azerbaijan in Berlin in 2011. Attendees included board members former Ministers Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Michael Glos. Hans-Eric Bilges of Consultum is a member of the Executive Board of the German-Azerbaijan Forum which collaborates with TEAS and boasts a significant number of prominent ex-politicians on its board. Genscher reportedly called an MEP during a debate in the European Parliament about a resolution over Azerbaijan. The firm also represents Kazakhstan.
The Office of Communication of Azerbaijan (OCAZ) in Brussels claims to be a “non-profit” liaison between the country and the European institutions, and organises “meetings with members of Belgian and European parliament, business people from Western European countries”. However, it appears to be an initiative funded by the government of Azerbaijan.
Despite all this lobby spending, in September 2014 the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for targeted sanctions against Aliyev’s regime, as a result of increasing human rights abuses in the country. It also condemned in strong terms the fact that Azerbaijan held the Presidency of the Council of Europe during 2014. MEP Ivo Vajgl, earlier singled out for failing to declare his trip to Azerbaijan to monitor the 2013 elections (see above) was one of the MEPs who voiced opposition to these measures, as TEAS approvingly pointed out in its press release.
Sources
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