{"id":797,"date":"2014-09-08T15:11:24","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T15:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=797"},"modified":"2014-09-11T09:26:17","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T09:26:17","slug":"ambassador-elin-suleymanovs-men-news-report-reveals-lobbying-scheme-of-aliyev-regime-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=797","title":{"rendered":"Ambassador Elin Suleymanov\u2019s Men: News Report Reveals Lobbying Scheme of Aliyev Regime in the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Azeri Report<\/em><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON DC. September 8, 2014: The New York Times published “Azerbaijan and Think Tanks<\/a>“, a journalist investigation, reporting about the Azerbaijani Embassy\u2019s lobbying efforts aimed at manipulating the local public opinion through influencing the policy recommendations of the local think tanks. The article is linked to the images of the documents proving that the Azerbaijani Embassy directly hired lobbying groups to promote the interests of the Azerbaijani government.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Apparently, the Azerbaijani Embassy to the US penetrated the important think tanks of the country by utilizing the lobbying services of the DCI Group and the Podesta Group. These lobbying groups were hired with the explicit purpose of expanding the relationships with think tanks in the United States to try to reinforce public opinion in the country and to make it clear that Azerbaijan is an important security partner of the US. The New York Times noted that this campaign \u201cproduced real results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Azerbaijani Ambassador to the US Elin Suleymanov was listed as a foreign principal in the Registration Statement of the DCI Group filed with the Department of Justice in October 2012. In 2014, Azerbaijani Embassy switched to working with a new lobbying organization, the Podesta Group, \u201crun by a close ally of Obama administration, Tony Podesta,\u201d reported the New York Times. Again, the lobbying group was hired directly, and the Azerbaijani Ambassador to the United States Elin Suleymanov personally signed the engagement agreement. The Podesta Group was paid fifty thousand dollars per month, plus expenses for its services.<\/p>\n

The New York Times also noted that Azerbaijan\u2019s State Oil Company (SOCAR) also participated in buying influence with the local think tanks. Specifically, the newspaper mentions SOCAR\u2019S donation to the Atlantic Council, and the Atlantic Council returning the favor by holding an event in July with a conclusion which repeated the propaganda goals of the Azerbaijani government stated in its agreement with the DCI Group, almost in verbatim: “Azerbaijan\u2019s concerted efforts in recent years to demonstrate its value as a NATO partner country.\u201d The participants at the event, including a State Department official, praised Azerbaijan repeatedly as an important security ally of the United States.<\/p>\n

The New York Times article describes only a fraction of the large lobbying efforts launched by the Azerbaijani government to buy the US support for its onslaught on the civil society in Azerbaijan. In late July, the Houston Chronicle published a journalist investigation showing the US lawmakers making expensive trips to Azerbaijan, paid by SOCAR, at times in violation of the ethics rules set for the legislators by the existing laws and regulations. The Hill newspaper which the Wikipedia describes as \u201cfor and about the Congress\u201d has turned into a platform for frequent publications by various lobbyists of the Aliyev regime. One of the frequent contributors of the newspaper, Jason Katz, is usually introduced with a disclaimer at the bottom of his articles praising the Aliyev dictatorship with the following sentence: \u201cKatz is the principal of TSG, LLC, a consultancy that advises foreign governments, NGOs and corporations in the realms of strategic communications, politics and policy.\u201d However, there is never any mentioning of the fact that that article itself is a commercial product of the lobbying efforts of the Azerbaijani government. Katz\u2019s article \u201cUS can learn from Azerbaijan<\/a>\u201d presents Azerbaijan as a \u201cstrategic ally\u201d of the US. So does the article of a more prominent Hill author, the former CIA director R. James Woolsey titled \u201cAzerbaijan moves towards democracy<\/a>\u201d. And there was no sarcasm in that article. Mr. Woolsey meant what he wrote.<\/p>\n

One of the Hill authors went as far as attacking the Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty (RFE\/RL). The Hill columnist Norma Zager openly defended the policy of the Azerbaijani government to wine and dine the statesmen from the US and Europe in order to buy an acceptance for its human rights violation by penning the article \u201cFriends with Money\u2026<\/a>\u201d: \u201cAzerbaijan is chastised for what detractors call, \u201cCaviar Diplomacy\u201d and their wildly popular president, Ilham Aliyev, is called any number of terrible things by US tax payer funded Radio Free Europe.\u201d Just an opinion voiced by an independent journalist? Here is the continuation in a different US news portal: Another journalist, Maayan Jaffe wrote an article titled \u201cCongress Should Stop Using Taxpayer Money to Fund Radio Free Europe’s Attacks on Our Allies<\/a>\u201d. The article states: \u201cAdd Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty to the list of grievances about Congress\u2019 and the administration\u2019s use of America\u2019s precious tax income. RFE\/RL, together with Voice of America, cost American tax payers $750 million annually. Yet instead of the \u201cobjective news, analysis and discussion of domestic and regional issues crucial to successful democratic and free-market transformations,\u201d it attacks allied nations that espouse these values.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in Baku, the person dubbed as the \u201cgrey cardinal\u201d of the dictatorship regime in Azerbaijan \u2013 Ramiz Mehdiyev – held a large conference with the Azerbaijani media captains saying the following: \u201cRecently, a well-known American publicist Maayan Jaffe wrote an article stating that the US spends 750 million annually on the Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America. Yet instead of the objective news, analysis and discussion of domestic and regional issues crucial to successful democratic and free-market transformations,it attacks allied nations that espouse these values.\u201d Click here<\/a> for the link to the full speech of Ramiz Mehdiyev published in the official newspaper \u201cAzerbaijan\u201d (in Azeri). It looks like a coordinated effort where foreign money is buying \u201cmouths\u201d in the US to attack the taxpayer funded institutions, hoping to influence the taxpayers\u2019 decision.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the existing regulations for the lobbying organizations allow the dictatorships to make such lobbying efforts. The fact that the Azerbaijani ambassador Elin Suleymanov sees no reason to even hide behind a middleman and directly hires the lobbyists to manipulate the public opinion in the United States, speaks volumes about how the system works (Azeri Report).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Azeri Report WASHINGTON DC. September 8, 2014: The New York Times published “Azerbaijan and Think Tanks“, a journalist investigation, reporting about the Azerbaijani Embassy\u2019s lobbying [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-region","category-azerbaijan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":799,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions\/799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}