Crooked Banker Tapped Professionals to Manage Web of Dirty Money
Lawyers and advisers created a network of shell companies to oversee British mansions and an Italian vineyard for Azerbaijan’s Jahangir Hajiyev.
Jahangir Hajiyev was running out of money.
That was the urgent subject before the board of a company based in the tax haven of Guernsey in September 2015. For years, Hajiyev, then chairman of the International Bank of Azerbaijan, had used a chain of trusts and shell companies stretching from Cyprus to the Channel Islands to move tens of millions of dollars out of the state-owned lender, according to allegations in U.K. court filings.