The money, intended for the families of the deceased at the frontline Azerbaijani soldiers, is spent on bribes for Europeans. Jamil Hasanli, chairman of the National Council of the Democratic Forces of Azerbaijan (NEDC), wrote on his page in the social network Facebook, commenting on the publication of international media about the “Caviar Diplomacy” of Azerbaijan.
According to Hasanli, bribing the European MPs, the Azerbaijani authorities managed to achieve the fact that in January 2013 the report of the German deputy Christoph Strasser on human rights violations and political prisoners in Azerbaijan was rejected.
He noted that former head of the European People’s Party faction in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Luca Volonte had received from the Azerbaijani government a bribe of 2 million 390 thousand euros through the head of the Azerbaijani lobby in the Council of Europe, Elkhan Suleymanov. This money was distributed among MPs from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Great Britain and other European countries. The Italian prosecutor’s office has already discovered those organizations through which bank accounts the money was sent.
“The Azerbaijani government, which avoids paying money to the families of martyrs on various pretexts, has given a bribe of 3 million euros to PACE parliamentarians to receive a piece of paper from the Council of Europe that there are allegedly no political prisoners in the country and to reject Strasser’s report. Considering the moral and legal aspects of this shameful deal, this is an absolute shame for Azerbaijan,” Jamil Hasanli stressed.
It is recalled that earlier, the “European Stability Initiative” published the second part of the report on Azerbaijan called “Caviar Diplomacy: European Swamp”, which describes blatant facts of corruption schemes organized by the Azerbaijani authorities with the involvement of high-ranking European politicians. The study describes the relationship of the Azerbaijani authorities with the Italian parliamentarian Luca Volont, who received about 3 million euros from Azerbaijan for “his dirty lobbying services.” Pedro Agramuntu, who visited Azerbaijan in 2003, 2005, 2010 and 2013 as an election observer, constantly defended Baku, when it was a question of human rights violations in that country.