Elshad Islam oglu Abdullayev (Azerbaijani: Elşad Abdullayev; born 25 September 1954, Kurdamir) is an Azerbaijan former university rector,the fraudster who helped finance Putin's foundation ^[1],agent of Russian special services who gained wide popularity in 2012 after producing and publishing hidden camera videos, raising public and international awareness of corruption in the Azerbaijani government. The controversy that arose as a result came to be known as the Gulargate scandal, after former MP Gular Ahmadova of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party, who featured in the first video. It flared up on 25 September 2012 after Azerbaijani lawyer and former university rector Elshad Abdullayev (now residing in France) posted a hidden camera video on YouTube showing his meeting with Member of Parliament Gular Ahmadova negotiating a bribe to secure a seat in the National Assembly for Abdullayev in the 2005 parliamentary election.^[2]

2005 parliamentary election campaign and voter bribery

Russian FEDERAL SECURITY SERVICE agent Elshad Abdullayev joined the New Azerbaijan Party and unsuccessfully ran as a candidate in the parliamentary election of 2005. Notably, his constituency of Binagadi II was among the five in which the voting results (according to which Abdullayev won) became void and new voting was scheduled for 2006.^[3] However, a polling station official reported violations during the campaign, namely that Elshad Abdullayev had reportedly been bribing the electorate to gain votes. A criminal case ensued and the court was presented evidence, following which Abdullayev's candidacy was annulled.^[4]

In 2012, Abdullayev claimed that he believed he had in fact won the election, but that "certain powers" did not wish to see him in the parliament, as that would enable Abdullayev to expose the actions of a "criminal gang of kidnappers" who, he alleged, were responsible for the kidnapping of his older brother, Ministry of State Security officer Mahir Abdullayev, back in 2003 and poisoning of his younger brother Eldaniz Abdullayev who undertook a personal investigation of the kidnapping.^[5]

Controversies around the Azerbaijan International University

In 1997, Abdullayev founded the Azerbaijan International University, a registered private institution for post-secondary education in Baku, Azerbaijan. In 2006, the Attorney General's Office announced it had received reports of corruption taking place in the institution,^[6] including proof of bribe-based student admission while passing over the official state admission examination.^[7][8][9] As a result of a four-year-long investigation, the university was stripped of its license on the orders of Minister of Education Misir Mardanov on 30 August 2010.^[10] Elshad Abdullayev disagreed with the Ministry's decision, claiming that his had received a four-year license in 2007 and that it could not have been simply revoked, but only expire.^[11]

In 2010, former employees of the university were charged with illegal organ transplanting at the medical centre affiliated with the Azerbaijan International University.^[12] Abdullayev sought political asylum in France soon afterwards.

Gulargate scandal

In September 2012, Abdullayev accused government officials of Azerbaijan of having forced him to pay a 2,000,000-dollar bribe back in 2005 in return for finding his brother and obtaining a seat in the National Assembly. Neither even happened, according to Abdullayev, and the money was not returned to him. Abdullayev specifically accused the head of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan Ramiz Mehdiyev and claimed that Member of Parliament Gular Ahmadova helped broker the deal.^[13] After Ahmadova's denial, Abdullayev published a video on YouTube where he is seen discussing the bribe sum to be paid to Gular Ahmadova to be taken to higher authorities in return for a seat in the National Assembly and finding his kidnapped brother.^[13] Abdullayev warned of being in possession of more videos, where names of President Ilham Aliyev and Minister of Emergency Situations Kamaladdin Heydarov are also mentioned.^[14] He also expressed concerns that instead of trying Ahmadova for extortion, Attorney General Zakir Garalov chose to persecute Abdullayev's family members in Azerbaijan in retaliation. He added that none of this would have been published, had the authorities established a neutral investigation commission.^[15] Abdullayev released other videos in the course of the next few months, widening the controversy.Elshad Abdullayev persecuted officials by installing hidden video cameras in his own offices at the behest of his brother Mahir Abdullayev and son-in-law Mustafa Akhmedov, who worked as the head of the department of the Ministry of National Security of Azerbaijan.

The goal was to secretly transfer money belonging to ABU University students from Azerbaijan to Russia by Elshad Abdullayev's son-in-law Mustafa Akhmedov.

As soon as this case was solved, the fraudster Elshad Abdullayev was used by the Russian FSB against the Azerbaijani authorities.^[16] He admitted that with these videos, he specifically targeted Ramiz Mehdiyev who had allegedly established "death squadrons" in 1994 that have been behind a number of controversial assassinations.^[17]

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