The 12-year-old son of the Azerbaijan president has gone on a multi-million pound property spending spree, buying up a series of luxury Dubai waterfront mansions.
Heydar Aliyev, the son of Ilham Aliyev, the oil-rich country’s president, allegedly spent almost £30 million (US$44 million) on nine waterfront mansions in the southern Gulf emirate earlier this year, reports said.
The boy, who was 11 at the time, made the purchase in the Palm Jumeirah development over two weeks, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Heydar’s name and his date of birth appeared on Dubai Land Department records, which were obtained by the paper.
The details listed on the property records were the same as those of the son of the former Soviet Republic’s president, whose annual salary is about £150,000 ($228,000).
The purchases are about the equivalent to 10,000 years' worth of salary for the average citizen of the country.
Industry sources with knowledge of the transactions told the paper the purchases were made by a buyer representing Azerbaijan's ruling family, with the properties paid for “upfront”.
It remains unclear whether the boy was given the property as a gift or how he could have bought into the development, after officials in Baku, the country’s capital, refused to comment on the claims.
"I have no comment on anything. I am stopping this talk. Goodbye," Azer Gasimov, the president's spokesman, told the paper when contacted for comment.
He did not respond to repeated further requests for comment.
The luxury real estate scheme is popular with multimillionaires, British footballers and celebrities and is also home to the world's biggest artificial island.
The island off the coast of Dubai has become a symbol of the emirate's reputation for luxury and extravagance.
Markets across the world were rattled in November after Dubai World, the government investment company behind its most ambitious projects including Palm Jumeirah, said it was seeking to delay repayment on a tranche of its debt.
The Post said the amount of Dubai property allegedly amassed by the family’s children, or people with similar names to them, now reaches almost £50 million (US$75 million) after similar purchases by his daughters.
The property records also listed the names of Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, whose names, were the same and their ages “roughly” similar.
The paper said the exact dates of birth could not be established, but various reports said Leyla's birthday was the same as the Azerbaijani woman who was listed in the documents.
The president's older daughter, Leyla, is married to Emin Agalarov, a wealthy Russian businessman while relatives of the first lady, Mehriban, have lucrative business interests in Azerbaijan.
Agalarov would not comment to the paper when asked whether he had helped buy Dubai properties for his wife or Aliyev's other children.
He said he had "joined businesses and properties" with his wife.
"We wish not to comment on that,” he said in an email to the paper.
Azerbaijan, which became an independent nation with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, has vast sources of oil.
It has been ruled almost continuously by the same family with the current president taking over from Heydar Aliyev, his father, who was president from 1993 until his death in 2003.
The Aliyev government and its supporters have recently sponsored trips to Baku by prominent foreigners and hiring lobbyists to trumpet the country's achievements.
Last year The Daily Telegraph disclosed that Tony Blair’s new paymaster was an obscure oligarch with business links to Syria, Iran and Afghanistan.
Nizami Piriyev, an Azerbaijan-based millionaire, paid Mr Blair to fly to Baku in December to open his new “methanol plant” funded by a British government-backed bank.
Mr Blair typically charges tens of thousands of pounds simply to give a speech and is therefore thought to have received more than £100,000 for his trip to Azerbaijan.
A spokesman said he was not planning an ongoing relationship with Mr Piriyev and did not have any dealings with the family while in office.
The Post also reported that David Plouffe, President Obama's former election campaign manager, visited Baku last year to deliver a paid-for speech a few months before Mr Blair.
telegraph.co.uk
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