{"id":17972,"date":"2018-10-11T02:24:02","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T02:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17972"},"modified":"2018-10-11T02:24:02","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T02:24:02","slug":"woman-fights-uk-wealth-order-after-spending-21m-at-harrods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17972","title":{"rendered":"Woman fights UK wealth order after spending $21m at Harrods"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A woman from Azerbaijan<\/a> who spent about $21m at luxury London department store Harrods over the course of a decade has become the first target of a British power to seize money from people suspected of getting their wealth through corruption.<\/p>\n

A court has ordered Zamira Hajiyeva to explain where she got the money to also buy a $15m London home close to Harrods and a golf course outside the city.<\/p>\n

Hajiyeva’s husband, former International Bank of Azerbaijan chairman Jahangir Hajiyev, was sentenced to 15 years in jail in his home country in 2016 for fraud and embezzlement.<\/p>\n

The case marks United Kingdom<\/a>‘s first use of Unexplained Wealth Orders, introduced this year in a bid to curb London’s status as a haven for ill-gotten gains.<\/p>\n

The orders allow authorities to seize assets over $66,000 from people suspected of corruption or links to organised crime until the owners account for how they were acquired.<\/p>\n

Battle for properties<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Hajiyeva denies wrongdoing and is fighting to overturn the order and hang onto her properties.<\/p>\n

During previous court hearings, she was identified only as Mrs A, but a court order granting her anonymity was lifted on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Hajileva’s lawyers said in a statement that the issuing of a wealth order “does not and should not be taken to imply any wrong-doing, whether on her part or that of her husband”.<\/p>\n

They said the order “is part of an investigative process, not a criminal procedure, and it does not involve the finding of any criminal offense”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A woman from Azerbaijan who spent about $21m at luxury London department store Harrods over the course of a decade has become the first target of a British power to seize money from people suspected of getting their wealth through corruption. A court has ordered Zamira Hajiyeva to explain where she got the money to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}