Azerbaijani General Prosecutor's Office investigates record of talks about bribing for place at national parliament

Zakir Garalov, General Prosecutor of Azerbaijan, instructed the Baku City Prosecutor's Office to conduct investigation in connection with the appearance on the Internet of a video record of talks about corruption schemes, by which one of the participants of the talks hopes to get to the national parliament. The video record caused a great resonance in Azerbaijan.

Late in the evening of September 25, a video record was posted on the "YouTube", which showed a record of the conversation between a man and a woman. The man looks like Elshad Abdullaev, a former rector of the private Azerbaijan International University, abolished in 2010, and the woman looks like Gyulyar Akhmedova, an Azerbaijani MP. The video record shows one more woman, who was a mediator between the negotiators.

According to the video record, the parties dispute about the amount of bribe to be paid by the man for his "election" as a member of the Azerbaijani parliament at the elections of 2005. The man paid 500,000 (the currency was not mentioned) (the parties were likely to talk about US dollars, since at that time, the national currency was denominated, and the euro was rarely used in the settlements, note of the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent); however, later, the man was told that he should pay 500,000 more. The man insisted on 500,000 and indicated that they agreed for that very amount.

However, the woman, who looked like the MP, noted the need of doubling the amount and promised the man firm guarantees to include him in a presidential list of people, who would be "elected to be MPs."

In the evening of September 25, Shakhid Akhmedov, the assistant of Gyulyar Akhmedova, confirmed that the meeting between Akhmedova and Abdullaev did take place in 2005. However, according to him, the video record has been edited, and it distorts the nature of the meeting: in fact, Gyulyar Akhmedova demanded to return money of her voters, including money of young people, whom the rector allegedly promised to enlist to the higher educational institution and failed to fulfil those promises.

On September 26, Gyulyar Akhmedova herself also stated that the video record had been edited. According to her, the video record was edited by an order of Elshad Abdullaev, who "wanted to get political asylum in France by such means."

Gyulyar Akhmedova also said that during the meeting, she demanded that Elshad Abdullaev should return the money of the people, defrauded by him. "By that act, he only showed the extent of his guilty. I believed that he would return to people their money," the agency "APA" quotes Gyulyar Akhmedova as saying.

The video record caused a great resonance in the Azerbaijani society. NGO activists and oppositional politicians demand that the authorities should conduct rapid and comprehensive investigation into the video record.

The "Musavat" Party demanded to dissolve the Parliament and to hold new and fair elections.

Sardar Djalaloglu, the leader of the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan (DPA), has stated that no real parliamentary elections are held in Azerbaijan, since some of MPs are appointed on the basis of political loyalty, and other MPs pass through corrupt deals.