By Khadija Ismayilova and Nushaba Fatullayeva (for OCCRP)

Novruz Allahverdiyev, 40, lives in a mud house in the village of Chovdar, a small Soviet-era mining town in rural Azerbaijan.

He is one of 800,000 displaced persons from the war with Armenia that battered his native Nagorno Karabakh region in the early nineties.He and 60 other families  found shelter and a place to farm in the mountainous western region of Dashkesan. Like many of the displaced, Allahverdiyev is patriotic and the walls of his poor home are plastered with pages from an aging calendar featuring  portraits of Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan and his late father.

Allahverdiyev has faith the president will solve the latest problem his family and his community face. A British mining company has taken over some of his land and blocked one of two streams his village relies on for water. He believes the president will make sure he is paid for his losses.

Such faith may be misplaced.  What Allahverdiyev doesn’t know is that the -president and his family own a share of the new mine  threatening to swallow his town.  The UK company is actually a front for the first family who stand to add to their already enormous wealth, estimated to be in the billions of dollars, through the mining operation.

The New Mine

According to an October 2011 press release , the Azeri Ministry of Environment believes there are 44 tons of gold and 164 tons of silver under Chovdar, worth more than US$2.5 billion at current prices.

AIMROC (Azerbaijan International Mineral Resources Operating Company Ltd), a consortium of one UK and three offshore companies, has begun building the infrastructure needed to exploit that mineral wealth and full-scale mining is scheduled to start later this year.  Chovdar is one of >six goldfieldsthe government awarded AIMROC and the first to start mining operations.

But while Chovdar locals blame the "ingilis", the Azerbaijani name for Englishmen, the truth about the cause of their troubles is quite different. AIMROC owns a 70 percent stake in the six mines and the Azerbaijani government the remaining 30 percent.

 

AIMROC is a joint venture of four companies: Londex Resources S.A, Willy and Meyris S.A., Fargate Mining Corporation, and Globex İnternational LLP.  All are shell companies and it is not clear if any are backed by mining companies.  According to Azerbaijani officials, all were set up specifically for the deal. A fifth company, MINDECO, is the official project supervisor but has no ownership.  MINDECO (Mitsui Mineral Development Engineering Co Ltd) is a mining engineering company owned by Japanese giant Mitsui Mining and Smelting Co. according to its website.

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