“Mikaela Jav” made a name for herself as a DJ, spinning infectious electronic beats on the Spanish island of Ibiza, long famed for its fervent nightlife. The host of “Mikaela & Friends” parties, which kicked off on Saturday nights in the summer of 2015, also had an active presence on Facebook, where she posted sultry, jet-setting photos in Greece, Thailand, and Las Vegas,
OCCRP reports.
In Spanish press interviews, DJ Mikaela gushed about her love for Ibiza, her musical inspiration, and her life in Russia, which she described as her home.
An advertisement for one of “Mikaela Jav”’s parties in Ibiza.
In fact, OCCRP can reveal in this joint investigation with Transparency International’s U.K. chapter, ‘Mikaela Jav’ is Izzat Khanim Javadova, a cousin of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev. (Javadova’s stage name, Mikaela, is the name of her 22-year-old daughter).
Over the past few years, she and her husband, Suleyman Javadov, have been the targets of a UK investigation into millions of pounds that the country’s National Crime Agency (NCA) suspects are the proceeds of “corruption, theft or embezzlement.”
The existence of this investigation was revealed last year by the Evening Standard, and the newspaper’s reporting led to the release of documents showing that an “Azerbaijani couple” had received £13.9 million (nearly US$19.6 million) from questionable origins.
OCCRP earlier discovered that the Ibiza-loving DJ and her husband were the couple in question, but were unable to reveal their names until today, when the Evening Standard won a legal appeal to lift the court’s anonymity order.
The Javadovs used a network of 20 opaque companies based in mostly offshore jurisdictions to receive the funds in their UK accounts, according to the NCA. As a result, the agency argued, the money flowed in a way that “would not necessarily involve an auditable trail of banking transactions.”
NCA investigators identified six of these companies as being part of the Azerbaijani Laundromat, an all-purpose financial vehicle revealed by OCCRP in 2017. The system allowed the country’s ruling elite to embezzle funds, avoid taxes, launder money, funnel bribes to European parliamentarians, and move illicit funds out of Azerbaijan to the West, where it was used to purchase properties and fund luxurious lifestyles.
Leaked bank records show that the six companies from which the Javadovs received the millions - as well as a seventh identified by OCCRP but missed by investigators - were also involved in other questionable Laundromat transactions.
While previous investigations showed that many high-level Azerbaijanis used the Laundromat, Javadova is the first member of the ruling Aliyev family known to have done so.
President Ilham Aliyev has ruled the oil-rich Caucasian country with an iron fist for nearly two decades, and his tenure has been marked by massive violations of press freedoms and human rights. The Aliyev family has also attained enormous wealth during his rule.
