A jailed banker’s wife who was subject to the UK’s first unexplained wealth order has agreed to forfeit a Knightsbridge house worth £14 million and a golf club in Ascot.
Zamira Hajiyeva, who spent more than £16 million at Harrods in a decade, agreed to forfeit the properties following a six-year investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
The NCA said it believed the assets were obtained as a “direct result of large-scale fraud and embezzlement, false accounting and money laundering”, adding that “no reasonable explanation” was provided for the source of funds used to purchase either property.
Mrs Hajiyeva’s husband, Jahangir Hajiyev, was the chairman of the state-controlled International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) from 2001 until his resignation in 2015, and is currently serving a 16-year jail sentence in Baku for fraud and embezzlement among other offences.
Mrs Hajiyeva was the first person made subject to an unexplained wealth order (UWO), a power brought into force in January 2018 under so-called McMafia laws – named after the BBC organised crime drama and the book which inspired it.
The NCA applied for a property freezing order over the two properties in March 2021 and a claim for civil recovery at the High Court in June 2023.
On August 1, the civil recovery order was granted, resulting in the forfeiture of 70% of the value of both properties.
The High Court concluded the properties were purchased as a result of criminal activity and are therefore recoverable, but has not made any finding in relation to Mrs Hajiyeva’s knowledge of how the properties were paid for, the NCA said.
The NCA said its investigators identified numerous examples of funds derived from the IBA being transferred through multiple accounts in ways “consistent with common money laundering practices”.
The agency added that this was done by a close associate of Hajiyev, acting on his behalf.
Substantial sums were moved through a network of accounts and companies in a host of different jurisdictions – including the British Virgin Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Panama, Cyprus and Luxembourg – and channelled into luxury assets for the family.
A significant proportion could be traced directly to sums generated by promissory notes and loan agreements used to conceal the theft of IBA monies, the agency said.
The NCA said the purchase of the golf club was conducted through a complex structure of Luxembourg and Guernsey-registered companies, and by using offshore trusts in Guernsey and later Cyprus.
Virtually all of the funds used to purchase the Knightsbridge house are believed to have come from two specific IBA accounts, the NCA said.
It added that these were directed to the UK by an associate of Hajiyev via bank accounts set up in Cyprus, Estonia and Switzerland in the names of companies with no recorded link to Mr Hajiyev.
A British Virgin Islands company solely owned by the same associate was used to purchase the house, before the property was transferred into an offshore trust also set up in the British Virgin Islands.
Tim Quarrelle, branch commander for asset denial at the NCA, said: “NCA officers worked tirelessly to track the complex movement of these funds across the international banking system, through shell companies in multiple jurisdictions, in order to ascertain their source.
“This result comes almost six-and-a-half years after we served Mrs Hajiyeva with the first unexplained wealth order ever granted, and highlights our commitment to using all the tools at our disposal to combat the flow of illicit money into, and through, the UK.”
Simon Armstrong, deputy director at NCA Legal, said: “The NCA’s investigation was followed by complex and lengthy litigation, which saw NCA lawyers address numerous challenges and use a range of legal powers introduced by the Criminal Finances Act 2017 to successfully recover assets worth millions of pounds.
“This fantastic result demonstrates how the NCA will deploy all the powers available to identify, pursue and recover the proceeds of crime.”
In a High Court ruling in October 2018, dismissing Mrs Hajiyeva’s initial attempt to overturn the UWO, Mr Justice Supperstone said 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.