AZERI LEADERSHIP ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION

PanARMENIAN.Net - Swiss citizen, "Von Maiss and Partners" juridical company employee Hans Bodmer was arrested the other day in Seoul by the inquiry of the US court authorities. According to Vremya Novostey Russian newspaper site, he was announced the key figure for paying bribes amounting in millions of dollars to the Azeri supreme leadership for being given the opportunity to take part in the process of privatization in the country in 1997-1999. The US administration of justice holds the opinion that Hans Bodmer was a plenipotentiary representative of the consortium formed in the late 1990-th by several western companies pursuing the objective to participate in the privatization of Azeri State Oil Company (ASOC) and acquire the majority share holding. The chapter called "Azeri governmental officials" appears the most shocking one in the verdict of the New York jury. It states that some Azeri high rank officials and particularly the one possessing "the right of final resolution on privatization" received "corrupt payments". As Vremya Novostey states, the names of some of the officials are openly announced in the West, these being Azeri president Heydar Aliyev and his son, former ASOC vice president and acting prime minister Ilham Aliyev. Numerous variants of bribery as well as the process of transporting millions of dollars in cash in private planes from Zurich to Baku are described in the verdict.