Gerald Knaus, founder of the non-profit organization European Stability Initiative (ESI), recently issued a statement in which he severely criticized the British comedian John Oliver, the International Football Federation (FIFA) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) because of corruption scandals in which they were involved. As an illustrative example, he recalled the ESI report “Caviar Diplomacy” of Azerbaijan.
Thus, it is noted that the Council of Europe (CoE) – an organization that is called upon to defend democracy, the rule of law and human rights – should also develop active activities in the fight against corruption in Europe. However, according to Knaus, in reality everything looks different.
In recent ESI report “Caviar diplomacy” of Azerbaijan it is described how in April 2012 Luca Volonte, an Italian parliamentarian, travelled on a private trip to Baku to meet with Elkhan Suleymanov, a fellow PACE member. In December 2012 transfers of €320,000 were made to bank accounts of Luca Volonte. The money came from two companies registered in Birmingham and on the Marshall Islands. “This path was chosen to conceal the fact that these were payments from one PACE member to another”-Knaus notes.
In late 2012 and early 2013, Volonte helped build a coalition in PACE to defeat a resolution on political prisoners in Azerbaijan. Volonte then led the largest political party group in the assembly (EPP). The resolution was rejected by 125 votes to 79. Over the next two years Volonte received more than €2 million from Azerbaijan. At the same time there was a wave of new arrests of people in Azerbaijan for political reasons.
As Knaus notes, Luca Volonte admitted in an interview for an Italian documentary in November 2016 that he received this money. And yet, PACE has no mechanism to investigate this, nor do its leaders appear interested to learn more: as of now, the current agenda for the assembly session next week does not even foresee a debate on this dramatic development.
Recently leading human rights activists in Azerbaijan and former political prisoners, such as award winning journalist Khadija Ismayil and human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev, wrote to all PACE members urging immediate action: “We call on PACE to eliminate any trace of corruption and misconduct within the Pan-European human rights organisation, and to demonstrate a strong and consolidated stance on human rights violations in Azerbaijan.”
Knaus also notes that PACE members should certainly issue a strong public statement affirming that there can be no place for corruption in the Council of Europe, and that the recent admission by Luca Volonte that he received money from another PACE member is deeply worrying. This should be followed by an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the PACE vote on political prisoners in January 2013.
PACE should also develop a specific Code of Conduct for its members.However, as emphasized, the head of the PACE, Pedro Agramunt, does not pay due attention to cases of corruption and as a punishment only for a time deprives parliamentarians of the right to vote.
In his statement, Knaus also criticizes FIFA because of its involvement in several corruption scandals with different football clubs. “Today PACE has a worse anti-corruption system than FIFA” Knaus notes.
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.