Turkish tycoon paid $5 million for three apartments in London for the son of adviser to the Azerbaijani Prime Minister Ahmed Ahmedzade

Turkish tycoon Erdal Aksoy boasts of facilitating major deals between Turkey and Azerbaijan. As it turns out, his family is behind the offshore company at the center of a past OCCRP investigation.

To the sound of a piano, the protagonist of the biopic “All Life is a Problem Solver” wanders along the shore of the Caspian Sea in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Dressed in a suit and tie, he sits in front of the government building and tells viewers how he helped Azerbaijan “open up to the rest of the world.”

“If there were problems in Azerbaijan… people would say, ‘Let’s go to Mr. Erdahl. He will solve everything,” he shares.

“Mr. Erdal” is the famous Turkish businessman Erdal Aksoy. In 2022, a documentary film dedicated to Aksoy’s life and career was released on the YouTube channel of the family business Aksoy Holding: in it, he appears as an influential intermediary promoting cooperation between Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Journalists have identified a number of transactions in new corporate documents from the British register of offshore companies that close gaps in our previous investigation.

Papers required by Britain’s new transparency law reveal that the Aksoy family owns the offshore company Vremax Properties Limited, which was at the center of an OCCRP report in 2020.

What did you learn in 2020

Then journalists revealed that in 2008, Vremax bought a luxury apartment in London in which Juma Ahmedzade, the son of the head of a large Azerbaijani state-owned company, lived. He was allowed to live there.

The offshore Vremax, months before the purchase of the apartment, received several million dollars for “consulting services” from the British company of Turkish businessman Mehmet Cengiz.

During the same period, this company, Cengiz Inşaat, was hired to build the largest reservoir in Azerbaijan by a state-owned company controlled by Juma’s father, Ahmed Ahmedzade. Later, Vremax acquired two apartments adjacent to the first one, which Juma reconstructed. In total, the offshore company spent over five million dollars on London real estate for the son of an Azerbaijani official.

Although the transactions raised questions about a possible connection between Cengiz and Ahmedzadeh, last time journalists were unable to identify the owner of Vremax, registered in the British Virgin Islands. British authorities received revealing documents in January 2023. Judging by them, Batu Aksoy, Erdal’s son and CEO of Aksoy Holding, is the sole beneficiary of Vremax.

Vremax was forced to reveal the name of the beneficiary by the new Economic Crimes Law. It obliges all foreign enterprises that own property in the UK to hand over information about the owners to the authorities. Thanks to this law, journalists received a lot of new information about the beneficiaries of companies registered in offshore companies.

Cengiz Holding confirmed that Vremax was owned by the Aksoy family. The company said that the “consulting services” for which Cengiz Holding paid Vremax were related to market research and the search for new business opportunities, including in Azerbaijan. They didn’t mention the London apartment.

OCCRP also contacted Aksoy Holding and Turcas, another family firm headed by Batu Aksoy. Turcas’ chief lawyer said Vremax bought the property in London as an investment and its owner (they did not name him) has known Juma Ahmadzadeh for “several decades.” The company added that Juma does not own the apartments, but “occupies them temporarily, as a guest, and in return covers the costs associated with them.”

Juma did not respond to a request for comment, but in 2020, the state-owned company where his father worked, Azerbaijan Melioration and Water Resources OJSC, said that Ahmadzade’s family is not associated with Vremax.

“We would like to advise you that the assumptions made in your letter are based on false and misleading information,” the company wrote. “The mentioned infrastructure project was carried out in accordance with the legislation of Azerbaijan and international standards.”

Evidence of the Aksoys’ involvement in the Shamkirchay project is also on the Aksoy Holding website: there, under a photograph of a facility on the Shamkir River, it says that the company is “building reservoirs” in Azerbaijan.

Erdal Aksoy’s autobiography (“All Life is Problem Solving”), published in 2022, states that the consortium he assembled “worked on the construction of the Shamkirchay reservoir, one of the largest in the world, at the request of Aliyev.”

Turcas and Cengiz Holding told reporters that Cengiz is the only contractor for the project.

At the same time, Turcas noted that Aksoy Holding still collaborated with Cengiz Inşaat. “Aksoy Holding helped the company successfully implement projects in Azerbaijan through various agreements. The chairman of the board of our company is mentioned in the book specifically in connection with this partnership,” Turcas said.

However, both the book and the biopic of the same name mention Ahmed Ahmedzadeh.

The book says that Akhmedzade, the current adviser to the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, is one of Aksoy’s “Azerbaijani friends.” In the film, Ahmedzade notes that the Turk “with all his heart” wants to help Azerbaijan.

In the film, Aksoy is praised by another Azerbaijani official, former head of the Central Bank Elman Rustamov. His daughter Gunel is married to Juma Ahmedzadeh and lives with him in a London residence bought by Vremax. (According to documents in the Czech business register and the British Companies House, Günel and Dzhuma list a London residence as their postal address.)

“Mr. Erdal is our true friend, he is always on our side no matter what,” Rustamov says in the film on behalf of the Azerbaijanis. Rustamov, an adviser to the prime minister, is also called Erdal’s friend in the book.

Empire of the Aksoy family

Aksoy Holding, which Erdal Aksoy founded in 1978, conducts business in the fields of trade, energy, tourism and real estate. In addition to Erdal, the company is owned by his son Batu and daughter Banu.

The company is the main shareholder of the investment firm Turcas Petrol, which specializes in the oil, gas and energy sectors. Aksoy Holding’s assets and investments include the five-star Conrad Istanbul Bosphorus Hotel and The Ritz-Carlton Residences in Bodrum.

Judging by the corporate documents and biography of Erdal Aksoy, even before the Shamkirchay project and the purchase of London real estate, he organized large transactions in Turkey for the government and presidential family of Azerbaijan.

In 2006, Aksoy Holding and Turcas Petrol, together with the Azerbaijani state-owned company SOCAR, bought 51 percent of the shares of the Turkish state-owned company Petkim for more than two billion dollars. Aksoy told biographers that he convinced the Azerbaijani president and Turkish bureaucrats to agree on the deal.

By the end of 2011, Aksoy Holding and Turcas Petrol sold their stakes in Petkim to SOCAR for more than $70 million.

In 2013, Aksoy Holding bought the Turkish division of Bahraini TAIB Bank BSC, and in 2015 sold it to a private bank owned by the presidential family of Azerbaijan.

According to Erdal Aksoy’s biography, Heydar Aliyev instructed Azerbaijan’s Deputy Prime Minister Abid Sharifov—he introduced Erdal and Aliyev in Istanbul—to “invite Mr. Erdal” to implement the project.

The book says that “Aliyev gave the command “Begin”, and the Erdal Aksoy consortium began construction.”

Cengiz Holding representatives confirmed to OCCRP that the company’s construction division’s first project in Azerbaijan was indeed the Vaikhira Reservoir, noting that Aksoy Holding had “one percent” there. The company added that this is the only joint project of two companies in Azerbaijan.

An economic analyst in Baku told OCCRP reporters on condition of anonymity that the reservoirs were built during a period when there was a boom in Turkish companies in Azerbaijan.

Turkish firms completed a billion dollars worth of infrastructure and construction projects in 2010-11, he said, figures cited in the Turkish Contractors Association’s 2021 report. The document states that the Shamkirchay project is one of the largest of all that Turkish companies have implemented in the country.

According to the association, in 2013 (a year before the official opening of the Shamkirchay reservoir), the cost of construction and infrastructure projects of Turkish companies in Azerbaijan was three billion dollars, and in 2022 – two billion dollars.

According to his book, Aksoy will soon become an honorary citizen of Azerbaijan. Authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

In the film All Life Is Problem Solving, 80-year-old Aksoy expresses his commitment to two countries.

“I always think about what more I can do for my native Turkey,” he says. “And I also consider it my duty to think in the same way about Azerbaijan.”