Azerbaijan: ex-Rector of private university Elshad Abdullaev declared wanted

Law enforcement bodies of Azerbaijan have put Elshad Abdullaev, the former Rector of the private Azerbaijani International University (AIU), who is now abroad, on the international wanted list. He is accused of trafficking in human organs and abuse of office powers.

Investigators have established that Dilara Ismailova, the chief physician of the medical centre of the AIU, despite the absence of the license for making transplantation surgeries, following an order of Rector Abdullaev, entered a criminal conspiracy with the citizens of Israel Boris Volfman, Yuri Katzman and others, and created the conditions for holding – in March-December 2009 – 13 transplantations of human organs. They used needy citizens of Ukraine as donors.

Abdullaev is now in France; he became known recently for his statements in media, where he claimed the involvement of high-ranking Azerbaijani officials in the kidnapping in 2003 of his brother – Makhir Abdullaev, the Vice-Rector of AMU and an intelligence officer. Besides, Abdullaev said that he bribed senior officials of Azerbaijan in exchange for their promise to help him in being elected a Deputy of the National Assembly at the 2005 parliamentary elections.

After Abdullaev spread video records, the head of the state ordered to set up, in early October 2012, a new operative-investigating group under the General Prosecutor's Office of Azerbaijan to investigate the disappearance of Makhir Abdullaev. However, since then, investigators gave no comment.