Jailed Banker’s Wife Won’t Be Extradited From London

(Bloomberg) -- The wife of a jailed banker, the target of the U.K.’s first unexplained wealth order, won’t be extradited to Azerbaijan because of concerns that she won’t get a fair trial, a London court ruled.

Zamira Hajiyeva, who was unmasked last year as part of a British crackdown on foreigners linked to overseas corruption, won’t be sent to her home country, Judge Emma Arbuthnot said Thursday at Westminster Magistrates Court. Arbuthnot said that while Hajiyeva gave no explanation for where her money came from, she was worried about the Azerbaijan legal system’s ability to deal with a case that raised political issues.

Hajiyeva, who had no income of her own, attracted attention from British authorities after splashing 16 million pounds ($19.8 million) in funds across Europe, including at London’s Harrods department store. Her husband, Jahangir Hajiyev, the former head of International Bank of Azerbaijan, is serving a 16-year prison sentence in the country for abuse of his office. Even though his annual earnings as a state employee never went beyond $70,000, his wife owned a pair of properties in the upmarket Knightsbridge area in London.

“The combination of a judiciary which is not independent of the executive, lawyers who are punished if they take on cases of interest to the state, the approach of the court and authorities to Mr. Hajiyev’s trial, all lead me to conclude that there is a real risk that Mrs. Hajiyeva, whose case is high-profile and sensitive and not a normal criminal case will suffer a flagrant denial of justice,” the judge said.

The government plans to appeal.

A lawyer for Hajiyeva declined to comment, citing ongoing proceedings. She’s set to fight the anti-corruption order in the Court of Appeal later in the year.

Hajiyeva, who was arrested last year, won’t get a fair trial in Azerbaijan, her attorney Hugo Keith said at hearings earlier in the year. The former Soviet republic under President Ilham Aliyev has seen the legal profession “terrorized,” he said.

Still, the judge said there appeared to be a strong case against Hajiyeva regarding a conspiracy to launder the proceeds of crime. “There has been no explanation for the money that she spent,” she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Browning in London at jbrowning9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Christopher Elser

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