6 replies to this topic

[Yervant1]

OCCRP Names Aliyev "Person Of The Year "

http://hetq.am/eng/n...-the-year-.html
20:33, January 1, 2013

Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, has won the first ever
Organized Crime and Corruption Person of the Year bestowed by the
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The award is
given for the person who figured prominently in 2012 on stories on
crime and corruption in its coverage area. Aliyev was chosen because
of new revelations this year about how his family had taken large
shares in lucrative industries including the telecom, minerals and
construction industries often through government related deals.

The award is chosen by the 60 reporters and 15 news organizations that
make up the OCCRP consortium. Runners-up included Albanian drug lord
Naser Kelmendi, President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov and Russian
President Vladimir Putin.

[MosJan]

[Yervant1]

Azerbaijani President Aliyev Named Corruption's 'Person Of The Year'


Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev "and his family, in fact, along with other persons in his inner circle are involved in so many secret businesses that we uncovered," says Paul Radu, OCCRP executive director

By Robert Coalson
January 02, 2013

In 2012, corruption watchdog Transparency International reported that two-thirds of the world's countries may be considered "highly corrupt." It would seem tough to choose someone for the dubious honor of corruption's "person of the year."

One investigative-journalism NGO has done just that.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), based in Sarajevo and Bucharest, has awarded the crown to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

The group, which specializes in reporting on corruption in the region stretching from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, also gave out some "honorable" mentions. They went to alleged Kosovo-born cigarette and drugs smuggler Naser Kelmendi, Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, Russian President Vladimir Putin, politically connected Serbian entrepreneur Miroslav Miskovic, longtime Uzbek President Islam Karimov, and wanted Serbian drugs smuggler Darko Saric.

The informal list was determined by representatives of the 15 international media organizations that make up the OCCRP. It is aimed at highlighting the intrepid and often courageous reporting that is needed to expose corruption in these notoriously opaque countries.

The OCCRP gave the nod to Aliyev, citing extensive reports and "well-documented evidence" that "the Aliyev family has been systematically grabbing shares of the most profitable businesses" in Azerbaijan for many years.

Secret Ownership Stakes

The reports include secret ownership stakes in banks, construction firms, gold mines, and telecommunications firms. Many of the reports about Aliyev were investigated by OCCRP affiliate Khadija Ismayilova, a journalist with RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.

"President Aliyev and his family, in fact, along with other persons in his inner circle are involved in so many secret businesses that we uncovered, actually together with Radio Free Europe this year," says Paul Radu, OCCRP's executive director. "We identified hidden companies that were owned by the first family of Azerbaijan in Panama, for instance, or in the Czech Republic. And we identified assets that they owned back in Azerbaijan via these companies."

Radu is optimistic about the new tools that are making this kind of reporting more and more effective. One example he cites is that OCCRP has successfully partnered with a Scottish computer hacker.

"He works right now with us at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and he is the one who scraped [eds: got into] the Panamanian registry of companies and that allowed us to perform name-based searches," Radu says. "And this is how we found the companies that are owned by the daughters of Aliyev and by his wife in Panama."

However, Radu adds that the impact of such reporting in the case of the Aliyev family has not been what one might hope.

The ownership structures of the family's foreign assets have been changed; the Azerbaijani parliament in June passed a law making it more difficult to discover who actually owns commercial companies and shielding Aliyev and his family from prosecution.

A Terrifying Campaign Of Threats

Moreover, journalist Ismayilova was subjected to a terrifying campaign of threats and harassment that she alleges was orchestrated by Aliyev's political allies.

Nevertheless, OCCRP editor Drew Sullivan says that "2012 was a banner year for those of us who cover organized crime and corruption. It is a growth industry around the world."

According to Radu, the OCCRP is now combining numerous international databases and linking them to the organization's ongoing files of "persons of interest" -- future candidates to unseat Aliyev as "person of the year."

The OCCRP list is also intended to highlight the global impact of crime and corruption. Radu maintains that most of the people on the OCCRP list have dubious and opaque ties far beyond the borders of their country.

"There are persons such as Darko Sadic, for instance, who is a well-known drug trafficker," he says. "And these sorts of persons are not well-known outside of the Balkans, but in fact they are part of very, very large networks that stretch sometimes across continents. In this case, this person was involved in cocaine trafficking from Argentina all the way to the Balkans."

Radu adds that organized crime from the Balkans and the former Soviet Union is deeply involved in the savage drug wars in Mexico and in massive resource theft from impoverished countries in Africa. This makes it all the more important to expose these people and the corrupt schemes they exploit, he says.

[Yervant1]

Let's keep the crooks name in sirculation!!!!

http://asbarez.com/1...of-the-year’/
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev

BUCHAREST - Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has won the first ever
Organized Crime and Corruption Person of the Year bestowed by the
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

The award is given for the person who figured prominently in 2012 on
stories on crime and corruption in its coverage area. Aliyev was
chosen because of new revelations this year about how his family had
taken large shares in lucrative industries including the telecom,
minerals and construction industries often through government related
deals.

The award is chosen by 60 reporters and 15 news organizations that
make up the OCCRP consortium. Runners-up included Albanian drug lord
Naser Kelmendi, President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov and Russian
President Vladimir Putin.

`2012 was a banner year for those of us who cover organized crime and
corruption,' said OCCRP editor Drew Sullivan. `It's a growth industry
around the world and we expect a lot of work next year as well.'

OCCRP, based in Sarajevo and Bucharest, is a non-profit, consortium of
independent investigative centers, media outlets and investigative
journalists from 20 countries. Its purpose is to educate readers
worldwide on how organized crime and corruption works. Click here to
read the full report (OCCRP).

[Yervant1]

Hetq.

Azeri MP Claims Hetq Editor Influenced OCCRP in "Man of the Year" Selection





23:44, January 7, 2013

An Azerbaijani Member of Parliament said Monday that the OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) was biased by Armenian interests in its selection of Ilham Aliyev as its "Man of the Year" according to the News.Az website.
MP Fuad Muradov (photo) claimed to have inside information that Edik Baghdasaryan, director of Hetq and the Armenian Investigative Journalists NGO, influenced the selection through his position on the board of directors of OCCRP.
The award is given for the person who figured prominently in 2012 on stories on crime and corruption in its coverage area. Aliyev was chosen because of new revelations this year about how his family had taken large shares in lucrative industries including the telecom, minerals and construction industries often through government related deals.
OCCRP Editor Drew Sullivan refuted the claim saying the process was entirely internal to the organization, which is a network of independent, not-for-profit investigative journalism centers stretching from Europe to Central Asia.
Sullivan also pointed out that while Hetq is an OCCRP member organization, Baghdasaryan is not a board member.
“The ballots for the person of the year were solicited from about 60 reporters in 20 countries," Mr. Sullivan said. "To claim inside information that Edik Baghdasaryan somehow controls OCCRP policy is both wrong and self-serving.”
According to News.Az, Muradov said “The investigation revealed that this decision which aimed to discredit the Azerbaijani president was made directly at the initiative of Bagdarasyan.”
This is not true, said Sullivan.
“The only person who discredited the Azerbaijani president is himself through his actions. We are just reporting the facts,” he said.

[Zartonk]

Prime Comedistan material!

[Yervant1]

ALIYEV CRITICISM PROVOKES E-MAIL AVALANCHE FROM AZERABAIJAN

http://www.tert.am/e...zeri-reactions/
12:43 ~U 25.01.13

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) publishes
dozens of juicy stories every year.

But very few of them generate the kind of response the group has
received this month after naming Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev
corruption's "person of the year" for 2012.

"There has been a coordinated attempt to spam us with a significant
amount of e-mails," RFE/RL quoted Drew Sullivan, the editor at OCCRP,
an investigative-journalism NGO based in Sarajevo and Bucharest, as
saying. "Most of them are very similar [and] seem to follow a format
or a couple different formats. I have received approximately 4,000
of them."

RFE/RL, which covered the original story on January 2, has also been
targeted by the spam attack, receiving a similar amount of mail.

The spam assault seems to be part of a stepped-up effort by Aliyev
supporters - possibly prompted by the Azeribaijan government -
to take control of the narrative about Azerbaijan on the Internet,
analysts and activists say.

Most of the messages received by OCCRP and RFE/RL are signed and appear
to come from real individuals. However, for the most part they contain
very similar messages in English, Azeri, or Russian. OCCRP computer
specialist Dan O'Huiginn estimates that 5-10 percent of the messages
are from automated servers (bots), while the rest seem to be cut and
pasted or forwarded by actual people.

The messages do not address the specifics of the corruption charges
against Aliyev and his family but rather state that Azerbaijani
citizens love their president and are impressed with the progress
the country has made since gaining independence.

'Upclassing Of Our Country'

Azerbaijani blogger Hebib Muntezir reported on January 15 that the
Education Ministry had issued a directive to teachers and students
urging them to send complaining e-mails to OCCRP and RFE/RL. The
ministry's message, which Muntezir also posted online, included
sample complaints in Azeri, Russian, and broken English, as well as
the e-mail addresses to which the messages should be sent.

The addresses provided in the alleged instruction from the Education
Ministry that Muntezir posted were the ones that received the spam,
and many of the received messages contained one or more of the proposed
sample letters.

The suggested English message says:

"It was very upset, having read information on our president on a
site http://occrp.org. Because, all of us are happy with works on
development and an upclassing of our country."

The spam campaign may be part of a broader effort by pro-government
forces in Azerbaijan to bolster their presence online.

"In Azerbaijan, essentially most of political life now takes place
on Facebook," says Katy Pearce, assistant professor of communication
at the University of Washington who studies the use of Internet
technologies in the former Soviet Union. "Because, as most people know,
there is very little room for freedom of expression in real life,
so to speak. So the Azerbaijani political Facebook world is very,
very active."

Until recently, Pearce says, the Azerbaijani opposition had the virtual
realm almost to itself, but over the last year or 18 months she has
seen an increasingly organized phalanx of pro-government youths posting
on Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media sites. She notes that
they have been using very aggressive tactics, including spamming the
walls of opposition-minded Azerbaijanis and flagging their posts as
"offensive" and asking Facebook to remove them.

Suspicious Tweets

One of the people targeted by such online campaigns was RFE/RL
Azerbaijani Service correspondent Khadija Ismayilova, who also
cooperates with OCCRP.

Ismayilova has written many of the investigative reports into
corruption by Aliyev and his family that were the basis of OCCRP's
decision to name Aliyev corruption's "person of the year."

Pearce has been studying the patterns of pro-government posts on
Twitter regarding a recent protest in Baku and how those posts
intersected with the campaigns against Ismayilova. She found that
many of the tweets came from recently created accounts that had very
few contacts on Twitter and had posted very few tweets in the past.

In her analyses of these patterns on Twitter, Pearce said she believes
it is likely the messages were either sent by one person logging
into multiple accounts or that an automated program was connected to
multiple accounts.

"Most of the evidence points to some sort of organized campaign to
use Twitter accounts to post the same message over and over again,"
she said. "And if there are actual real people behind those accounts,
I can't tell."

OCCRP editor Sullivan agreed that the latest spam campaign out
of Azerbaijan is something new. He says the organization's many
previous reports on corruption in the country were soundly ignored
by the authorities.

However, he added that the current spam campaign is a mere "annoyance"
that will not affect the OCCRP's work.

"We get lots of much more negative responses to our work," Sullivan
says. "It is a slight annoyance, but we can set filters to move most
of this out. It is too bad. We would love to hear from the people of
Azerbaijan if it was real. We just suspect from the way that this is
written that these are not real people with real concerns. This seems
to be somewhat of a bullying tactic. And that's not going to work."