Fraudster’s wife who spent £16m in Harrods named
THE woman who spent more than £16 million at Harrods has been revealed as the wife of a £54,000 a year Azerbaijani banker, who was jailed for embezzling £2 billion.
Zamira Hajiyeva, 55, is at the centre of a Mcmafia style financial investigation amid allegations that she used her husband’s stolen money to fund an extraordinarily lavish lifestyle.
Mrs Hajiyeva, who has lived in Knightsbridge for more than a decade, is the subject of the UK’S first Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO).
As well as spending more than £16million in the Harrods department store over a 10-year period, Mrs Hajiyeva owns a five-bedroom house worth £15million and bought the Mill Ride golf and country club in Ascot for £10.5 million.
Her husband, Jahangir Hajiyev, is the former chairman of the stateowned International Bank of Azerbaijan, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2016 for defrauding the bank out of £2.2 billion.
His official salary between 2001 and 2008 was £54,000 a year, but he was later estimated to be worth £55million.
Her identity had been shrouded in mystery after the courts agreed to protect her anonymity throughout the UWO process.
But following a challenge by The Daily Telegraph and other media organisations, the Court of Appeal agreed to lift the cloak of secrecy.
The National Crime Agency alleges that Mrs Hajiyeva used fraudulent funds to purchase her home which is just a short walk from Harrods.
It was alleged that she paid a deposit of £4million for the house in 2009 and had cleared her £7.4million mortgage in just five years.
Documents lodged at the High Court stated: “The NCA’S inquiries have not identified evidence which otherwise suggests (contrary to Home Office records) that R1 [Mrs Hajiyeva] has been a successful businesswoman or entrepreneur in her own right or that she has received significant income from other sources.”
Details of her lavish spending habits, which were laid bare in the court process, revealed that she had spent £16.3million at Harrods between 2006 and 2016. NCA investigators claimed she had used 35 different credit cards issued by her husband’s bank to fund shopping sprees and on one occasion had spent £150,000 on jewellery.
Official records also revealed Mrs Hajiyeva owned two bays within the private Harrods car park. The court also heard that Mrs Hajiyeva owned a £35million private jet and had a wine cellar stocked with some of the world’s most expensive vintages.
She had made an unsuccessful appli- cation to discharge the UWO, but her lawyers are appealing against that judgment.
Mr Justice Supperstone has ordered that Hajiyeva must comply with the UWO and explain how she came upon the funds used for the property purchases.
But her lawyers have continued to argue that her husband was a legitimate businessman, whose wealth was the result of a number of shrewd business deals.
They also argued that she could not be described as a “politically exposed person”, as required by the UWO, and that her husband’s role had been misrepresented.
In a statement they said: “The decision of the High Court upholding the grant of an Unexplained Wealth Order against Zamira Hajiyeva does not and should not be taken to imply any wrongdoing, whether on her part or that of her husband.
“The NCA’S case is that the UWO is part of an investigative process, not a criminal procedure, and it does not involve the finding of any criminal offence.”
Donald Toon, the director for economic crime at the NCA, said: “The NCA fully supports an open and transparent justice system that helps demonstrate our determination to ensure that the UK is not seen as a soft target for the investment of illicit finance. Unexplained Wealth Orders have the potential to significantly reduce the appeal of the UK as a destination for illicit income”
‘Unexplained Wealth Orders have the potential to reduce the appeal of the UK as a destination for illicit funds’