Zamira Hajiyeva, the wife of Jahangir Hajiyev, the former chairman of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), is facing extradition to Azerbaijan, where she is accused of embezzling millions of pounds from the IBA during the chairmanship of her husband.

The court in London (where Hajiyeva is residing at the moment) acquired new documents which revealed how Hajiyewa had lived an extraordinarily lavish lifestyle, splashing out a fortune at the famous Knightsbridge department store for over a decade. She managed to spend £16m in Harrods without raising any suspicions. To add more to the story, the recent documents had also revealed that Hajiyeva’s Knightsbridge home was bought in December 2009 by a company called Vicksburg Global Inc for £11.5m. Its director is a man from Azerbaijan named Elmar Baghirzade, who also was the director of a company registered in the UK by the name Berkeley Business Ltd, which in turn is connected to the husband of Hajiyeva. Her £10.5 million golf club in Ascot, Berkshire, is another strangely acquired property mentioned in the court documents. If Hajiyeva could not explain the sources of her spent wealth in front of the court, she might lose her entire property in the UK and could be extradited to Azerbaijan.

Her lawyer, Hugo Keith QC denounces the charges against his client. “We say that the criminal case is malicious and abusive because it has been brought against her for ulterior and political motivations. The credit cards were issued by the bank. There is nothing that proves in any shape or form that when they were given those credit cards they were not entitled to use them in any way. Spending money is not a criminal offence. Spending that sort of money in Harrods might be offensive but it is not a criminal offence under the law,” he said.

Hajiyeva is alleged to have been a member of an „organised criminal group“ of 37 people involved in embezzling 97 million US dollars (£76 million) from the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) between 2009 and 2015. Her husband, Jahangir Hajiyev, was sentenced to 15 years in prison and was ordered to repay 39 million US dollars by the Baku Court for Grave Crimes on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and misappropriation of public funds. According to Helen Malcolm QC, a lawyer representing the Azerbaijani government in the case, Hajieyeva spent her wealth through 28 IBA-issued credit cards. “The difficulty is, she withdrew sums, partly in Azerbaijan, both from ATMs and in cash, and partly through a number of luxury boutiques, hotels, restaurants and stores that are described as grand department stores, which I imagine is a reference to Harrods and others, where she spent money in US dollars, pounds and euros throughout different parts of Europe,” she said. 

Hajiyeva’s case came to the attention in the United Kingdom with the issuing of the unexplained wealth order (UWO, also called the McMafia order) in 2018. It is a type of court order issued by a British court to compel someone to reveal the sources of their unexplained wealth. Hajiyeva and her husband were the first suspects for possessing unexplained wealth in the United Kingdom after the issuing of this order in the country.