Revealed, how banker’s wife blew £16million in spending spree at Harrods
‘Scared to leave the house’
JAW- DROPPING details of a £16.3million spending spree at Harrods by a crooked Azerbaijani banker’s wife were revealed yesterday.
Jobless mother-of-three Zamira Hajiyeva, 55, spent £4million at French luxury jewellery and watches house Boucheron, £1.75million at Cartier and about £1million in the toy department.
She splashed out a further £250,000 in the perfume department and hundreds of thousands of pounds on high-end designer fashion brands, including Christian Dior and Fendi, during her decade of extravagance.
A single visit to the store’s tea and coffee department saw her spend £11,630.
Treating Harrods like a corner shop, she blew a further £32,000 on Belgian chocolates from Godiva, and £6,261.95 on wine and spirits in a single purchase.
The breakdown of her shopping at the famous department store, a few minutes’ walk from her home in Knightsbridge, came in legal documents released after the Press made a legal challenge for access to them.
Last year, Mrs Hajiyeva became the first person to be the subject of an Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO) – allowing the National Crime Agency to force foreigners to reveal the source of their wealth – when new socalled ‘McMafia’ anti-corruption laws came into force in January 2018.
The High Court ordered her to prove how she became so wealthy. If she can’t, she risks losing her £11.5million home in Knightsbridge and a Berkshire golf course worth nearly £11 million, owned by an offshore company of which she is a benefactor. She is appealing against the order.
Mrs Hajiyeva, who was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 2015, is facing extradition to Azerbaijan. Her husband Jahangir Hajiyev, 57, is serving a 15-year jail term for embezzling more than £100million while chairman of Azerbaijan’s state bank.
The cash stolen by him was allegedly funnelled through Mrs Hajiyeva. Mr Hajiyev earned £54,000 a year – but had an estimated £55million fortune.
The documents include 94 pages of records of transactions she made at Harrods between September 2006 and June 2016, using 35 credit cards issued by the bank which her husband was accused of defrauding.
Mrs Hajiyeva’s biggest identifiable single bill was £433,389.79 for Cartier jewellery. Her visits to the store also included frequent trips to the Caviar House, the champagne bar, cafes and restaurants. On one day, she spent nearly £2,000 in a Chinese restaurant.
Among the more unusual payments is £99,574 at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, which offered the chance for children to be transformed into a Disney princess or knight for up to £1,000 for 60 minutes before it closed in 2017.
Mrs Hajiyeva has a grown-up daughter from a previous marriage and two sons, both now understood to be aged over 17, with Mr Hajiyev. But it is not known exactly who benefitted from that particular spending.
On other occasions, she spent £3,139 in the children’s books department and £1,297.90 on gift wrapping.
Mrs Hajiyeva also kept herself well stocked with expensive lingerie. During one visit to Agent Provocateur, she spent £1,908.
In addition, she made several trips to the Harrods underwear and socks department, picking up £5,724 of goods on one visit.
Mrs Hajiyeva also regularly bought men’s luxury goods.
NCA financial investigator Nicola Bartlett told the court Mrs Hajiyeva’s spending was ‘significant’ in light of the allegations that Mr Hajiyev abused his position at the bank by issuing credit cards to relatives which would ultimately never be repaid.
The documents also included a statement from Mrs Hajiyeva to the High Court in which she claimed the purchase of the house in London was prompted by her ‘ kidnapping in Azerbaijan in 2005.’
Mrs Hajiyeva said she was ‘ held in atrocious conditions for 28 days’ and was ‘sacred to leave the house in Azerbaijan’ afterwards. So Mrs Hajiyeva and her husband decided that she should move to London with the children while he continued working in the former Soviet republic.
They chose London because ‘my daughter was already studying here’, she said. Howclosures
ever, her husband took care of buying the house and she ‘therefore had no knowledge of any of the payments made to purchase the property, their source, or any other details.’
The Harrods documents list spending by department but do not contain details of individual items bought. So it is possible that goods from one area of the store were paid for in another.
Some of the bigger transactions, including six-figure sums, are not itemised at all or appear in categories such as ‘international’ or ‘non-trade services’.
Yesterday, a Harrods spokesman said that the store had ‘comprehensively and ardently co-operated with all appropriate authorities and assisted with all inquiries.’
They added: ‘There has never been any suggestion that Harrods has operated in any way other than in full compliance with the highest regulatory and legal standards.’