The National Crime Agency has secured a central London property and a golf club in southeast England that were allegedly bought with the proceeds of a fraud scheme against an Azeri bank.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said on 5 August that it has reached an agreement with Zamira Hajiyeva – the wife of banker Jahangir Hajiyev, who was convicted of defrauding the International Bank of Azerbaijan – to forfeit a house in London’s upmarket Knightsbridge area worth around £14 million and a golf club in the town of Ascot. In 2018, the two properties became the subject of the UK’s first-ever unexplained wealth orders (UWOs), which allow investigators to compel people to reveal the origin of their assets if these seem disproportionate to their income. 

An NCA spokesperson said that 70% of the funds from the sale of the two properties will be remitted to the UK treasury after the agency has covered its legal fees, while the remaining 30% will be returned to Hajiyeva. The agreement was reached after the High Court of England and Wales granted the NCA civil recovery orders on 1 August worth 70% of the value of both assets. 

The NCA has alleged that Hajiyeva’s properties were bought using the proceeds of her husband’s crimes and that these were laundered through companies and bank accounts in the British Virgin Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Panama, Cyprus and Luxembourg. Hajiyev, the former chairman of International Bank of Azerbaijan, is serving a 16-year prison sentence after an Azeri court convicted him in 2016 and 2019 for defrauding the bank and its Moscow subsidiary.

“While the Court has concluded that the properties were purchased as a result of criminal activity and are therefore recoverable, it has not made any finding in relation to Mrs Hajiyeva’s knowledge of how the properties were paid for,” the agency said.

After a court granted the UWOs in 2018, UK police arrested Hajiyeva that same year on an extradition request from Azerbaijan – where she was accused of aiding her husband’s crimes – but Westminster Magistrates’ Court ruled a year later that sending her to the Central Asian country would breach her human rights.

UWOs came online in January 2018 with the passing of the Criminal Finances Act, and were tweaked in 2023 to protect investigators from huge legal bills for unsuccessful applications. Before approving a UWO, the High Court of England of Wales must be satisfied that the target is politically exposed or reasonably suspected of complicity in a serious crime. Once an agency has obtained a UWO, it can bring civil recovery proceedings against the underlying asset if the owner is unable to show that it was purchased using “clean” money.

The NCA said it hadn’t been provided with any “reasonable explanation” for the source of funds used to buy the Knightsbridge home and the golf club, and had been able to trace a “significant proportion” of the money to promissory notes and loan agreements designed to conceal funds stolen from the International Bank of Azerbaijan.

NCA branch commander for asset denial Tim Quarrelle said in a statement: “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.”

Hajiyeva’s solicitors, Roger Gherson and Thomas Cattee at Gherson, said in a statement that Hajiyeva decided to settle the proceedings because it was “impossible to defend them” without access to her husband who holds “information potentially crucial to the case”. They alleged that authorities in Azerbaijan denied Hajiyeva’s legal team access to her husband in prison and deprived him of food and medical treatment after the lawyers tried to share documents on the NCA’s case with him.

Gherson also acts for sanctioned oligarch Petr Aven, who had funds linked to his UK living expenses confiscated by the NCA a week earlier as part of the UK’s first sanctions-linked civil forfeiture.  

Counsel to Zamira Hajiyeva

Three Raymond Buildings

James Lewis QC and Ben Watson in London

Instructed by

Gherson

Partners Roger Gherson and Thomas Cattee in London

Counsel to the National Crime Agency

6KBW

Jonathan Hall QC in London

9 Gough Square

Tom Rainsbury in London