Uncovering the luxurious estates of Azerbaijan’s president
Investigation of Meydan TV supported by UJN
How to investigate the wealth of a family ruling a country when facing threats, arrests and imprisonment? How to expose its vast properties when land records are inaccessible and access on the ground is limited?
The latest investigation by Azerbaijani independent media Meydan TV shows how to overcome such challenges — by using evidence from space.
Through years of on-the-ground reporting and interviews with local residents, Meydan TV journalists collected pieces of evidence linking luxurious estates spread across the country to President Ilham Aliyev’s family. Most of these mansions are used privately by the family, without publicly available official records.
Local people have often paid a high price for their construction, reporters found. Families were relocated, farmland and pastures were lost, and parts of forests and lakeshores became inaccessible to local communities.
The Azerbaijani authoritarian regime has tried to stop investigations into the wealth of the ruling family by imprisoning independent journalists. Meydan TV continues its work and searches for new methods of investigation at a time when reporting on the ground is becoming increasingly challenging.
We developed an interactive map showing the 15 properties’ locations spread across the country. The map allows to explore each property into detail via satellite images. The visual analysis reveals large estates, including swimming pools, helipads and tennis courts. It is the first visual mapping of the Azerbaijani president’s estates across the country of this kind.
UJN supported Meydan TV in visualising these findings, working together with satellite journalists at Vertical52, who provided the satellite imagery used to examine the locations and show how the surrounding areas have changed.
Many of those properties were constructed in a problematic way. Thanks to the historical images we were able to identify how the areas changes and to confirm the testaments of local people protesting against the construction.
The satellite images reveal the change of Khutor, residential area in the capital city Baku. Homes were destroyed and families relocated in order to build a vast presidential complex and luxurious apartment owned by the company linked to the ruling family.
Many of the properties serving the Aliyev’s family can be found in scenic nature spots, surrounded by forests, lakes or rivers. One of the example is a mansion built in Gabala region at foothills of the Greater Caucasus Mountains. The historical images reveal a small village by the river, which was demolished in 2011 due to the construction. According to Meydan TV previous reportage, sixteen families were relocated.
Meydan TV journalists have been reporting on the wealth of the ruling family and exposing cases of corruption for years. Due to imprisonment and threats from the authoritarian regime, the reporting on the ground has become more and more challenging. This project uses the evidence from space to overcome these obstacles and allow journalists to continue in their work from exile.