A mansion in Knightsbridge and a golf club in Ascot owned by the wife of the jailed Azeri banker Jahangir Hajiyev have been forfeited to the British state as part of a settlement worth an estimated £18.5m to taxpayers. The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the luxury properties were obtained by Hajiyev as a “direct result of large-scale fraud and embezzlement, false accounting and money laundering” linked to the looting of a state-owned bank in Azerbaijan .
The assets, which the NCA said were funnelled through offshore jurisdictions including Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands, were the first to be subject to “unexplained wealth orders” (UWOs) introduced in 2017. Crime agencies can use UWOs – which have previously been called “McMafia” laws after a BBC drama – to trace potentially corruptly obtained assets. The NCA said it had seized the properties after a lengthy court battle over a UWO imposed on Hajiyev’s wife, Zamira Hajiyeva.
A trustee will auction off the assets, which have been estimated to have a combined value of £26.5m in previous court hearings. The government will get 70% of the proceeds, minus the NCA’s costs, with the remainder restored to Hajiyeva under the terms of a settlement agreement.
The actual amount recovered will depend on what the assets are sold for. In 2018, Hajiyeva lost a court battle to prevent herself from being named as “Mrs A”, the controller of offshore companies that housed the assets. She also lost a subsequent.