Azerbaijan freezes bank accounts of Centre for Economic Research and its leader

By FAIK MEDZHID
Caucasian Knot

In Azerbaijan, bank accounts of the Centre for Economic Research (CER) and its leader Gubad Ibadoglu have been frozen. On August 28, Gubad Ibadoglu was questioned by the General Prosecutor’s Office as a witness in the case against a number of local and foreign NGOs, the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent was told by the CER leader.

Gubad Ibadoglu has stated that he treats those measures as part of the campaign to eliminate civil society in Azerbaijan and the pressure on him personally with the aim of preventing him from being elected as the head of the “Musavat” Party.

In total, for 10 days, from July 30 to August 8, in Azerbaijan, four well-known figures of civil society were arrested: Rasul Jafarov, the coordinator of the campaign “Art for Democracy”, Leyla and Arif Yunus, human rights defenders of the Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD), and Intigam Aliev, the head of the Legal Education Society (LES). In its report on the arrest of Rasul Jafarov, the General Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan has announced opening of the criminal cases against a number of local NGOs, branches and representative offices of foreign NGOs. In August, Azerbaijani bank accounts of six local NGOs and one international NGO were arrested at the request of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan.

Read Gubad Ibadoglu’s article “Azerbaijan has no real economy“