Wife of jailed banker loses legal challenge over UK's first 'McMafia' wealth order

Zamira Hajiyeva has lost her challenge over the UK’s first unexplained wealth order
PA

Zamira Hajiyeva has lost a Court of Appeal challenge against the UK's first unexplained wealth order.

The "fat cat banker's wife", who spent more than £16 million at Harrods in a decade, was attempting to overturn a UWO obtained by the National Crime Agency (NCA).

The NCA launched the probe into a property in Knightsbridge, central London, which was bought for £11.5 million in 2009 by a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.

Her husband, Jahangir Hajiyev, was the chairman of the state-controlled International Bank of Azerbaijan from 2001 until his resignation in 2015, and was later sentenced to 15 years behind bars for fraud and embezzlement.

Zamira Hajiyeva arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in September 2019
Jonathan Brady/PA

Giving judgment in London on Wednesday, Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett dismissed Mrs Hajiyeva’s appeal.

The judge added that her application for permission to appeal against the court’s judgment had been refused.

BBC drama McMafia highlighted the problem of unexplained wealth
BBC WorldWide

A UWO allows the NCA to seize someone’s assets if they believe the owner is a politically exposed person (PEP) – someone from outside the European Economic Area in a position of power that makes them liable to bribery or corruption – and they are unable to explain the source of their wealth.

He argued that the banker was not a PEP, and said the NCA had “seriously mischaracterised” Mr Hajiyev’s job by describing him as a “government official” as the International Bank of Azerbaijan was not a “state-owned enterprise”.

The Court of Appeal ruled that, if the bank was a state-owned enterprise, “Mr Hajiyev fell within the definition of a politically exposed person because he was its chairman”, and that Mrs Hajiyeva “was also a politically exposed person because she was a family member of Mr Hajiyev”.

The court added: “The evidence was clear that the (Azeri) state had more than a 50% shareholding in the bank.

“On the facts of the case, the judge was entitled to conclude that it had ultimate control, and consequently Mr Hajiyev was a politically exposed person, being a person who had been entrusted with a prominent public function as a member of the management of a state-owned enterprise.”

Zamira Hajiyeva spent £16 million at Harrods
Ben Cawthra/LNP

Mr Lewis had also argued that the High Court was wrong to rely on Mr Hajiyev’s conviction, which he said followed a “grossly unfair trial” in Azerbaijan.

But the Court of Appeal found that “Mr Hajiyev’s conviction for fraud and embezzlement was only one of the strands relied on” by the NCA.

It stated that the NCA had also relied on “evidence of Mr Hajiyev’s status as a state employee and the unlikelihood that, as such, his legitimate income between 1993 and 2015 would have been sufficient to generate funds used to purchase the property”.

The judgment added that an August 2011 report from Werner Capital “which was intended to show that Mr Hajiyev was a ‘high-net worth individual’ with an assessed net worth of over 72 million US dollars” had in fact “posed more questions as to the source of his wealth than it answered”.

A High Court ruling in October 2018 dismissed Mrs Hajiyeva’s initial attempt to overturn the UWO. Mr Justice Supperstone said at the time that “three separate loyalty cards were issued to Mrs Hajiyeva” by Harrods, where she spent more than £16 million between September 2006 and June 2016.

Court documents later released to the media revealed that Mrs Hajiyeva blew £600,000 in a single day during a decade-long spending spree.

The NCA subsequently seized jewellery worth more than £400,000 from Christie’s over suspicions about how the items were purchased while the auction house was valuing the jewellery for Mrs Hajiyeva’s daughter.

In September, Mrs Hajiyeva fought off an attempt to extradite her to Azerbaijan to face fraud and embezzlement charges on the grounds that she would not get a fair trial.

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