A banker’s wife targeted under “ McMafia laws” after splashing out £16 million at Harrods has been given back her multi-million pound jewellery collection by law enforcers despite having to surrender her Knightsbridge home and a golf club on the grounds that they were bought with the proceeds of crime. The National Crime Agency had argued in court for years that Zamira Hajiyeva’s jewellery collection – which includes a £1.2 million Cartier ring and further pieces worth six figure sums – and two properties were acquired with money plundered by her husband Jahangir from his bank in Azerbaijan.
The agency’s argument about the properties was accepted by the High Court last month in an order requiring Mrs Hajiyeva to forfeit 70 per cent of the value of her £14 million home on Walton Street in Knightsbridge and the same proportion from the future sale of the Mill Ride Golf club in Berkshire. The court order ruled that the two properties had been purchased as the result of criminal activity without making any finding about whether Mrs Hajiyeva – who had denied wrongdoing throughout – had any knowledge of the illicit source of her husband’s wealth. But although the NCA described that outcome as a “fantastic” success and the result of “tireless” work by its investigators in tracing the illicit money movements behind the property purchases, it has quietly abandoned its attempt to secure the forfeiture of Mrs Hajiyeva’s jewels in separate legal proceedin.