BY ROXANA JIPA, VICTOR ILIE, AND DANIEL BOJIN 

It’s no secret that the family of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev likes to buy expensive buildings around the world, although it’s rarely clear where the money comes from.

But the history of the US$ 7.3 million house at 39 Popa Soare Street in Bucharest’s old city is even murkier than usual, involving offshore transactions, links to corrupt officials and organized crime, insider deals and a peculiar cult of personality for a dead leader.

The house today is the headquarters of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, a non-governmental organization set up and run by the family of the current Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the late Heydar Aliyev’s son.

Heydar Aliyev, who died in 2003 at the age of 80, was a former KGB general and first secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in Azerbaijan “who for 30 years ruled his native Azerbaijan with an iron fist,” according to his obituary in the New York Times.

The elder Aliyev also developed a cult of personality around himself, which, thanks in part to the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, persists more than a decade after his death with thousands of portraits of the dead leader on billboards and official structures across Azerbaijan, often shown with his son. Scores of streets, buildings and parks bear his name, statue or image, including as many as a dozen in foreign countries.

But what, exactly, is the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, and what does it do?

In Romania, officials don’t seem to be too sure. When asked about the status of the building at 39 Popa Soare St., the Romanian Gendarmerie and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs give conflicting answers.

For example, the building is guarded round the clock by the Gendarmerie, a law enforcement branch under the Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

"This is a diplomatic building," says one of the gendarmes, asking OCCRP reporters who are filming the building to present their IDs. As he speaks two other gendarmes emerge from a side street.

When reporters ask what diplomatic mission is located in the building, they are told, “the Azerbaijani Economic Representative Offices in Romania.” When reporters ask why the building is identified as the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, a second policeman says the foundation “has a special status.”

The Heydar Aliyev Foundation says on its website that it exists due to "the nation’s wish to express its esteem for the memory of Heydar Aliyev, who entered our history as a builder of an independent state, and the necessity of reflecting his rich moral heritage, underlining the importance for our country of the philosophy of Azerbaijanism and cultivating the national statehood ideas in our children."

The Gendarmerie says they are there to guard unspecified diplomatic interests and not the foundation headquarters. On the other hand, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says neither the foundation nor the building have diplomatic status.

Whatever the foundation does, the building itself appears to be nothing more than another multi-million-dollar property owned secretly by the Aliyev family. Previous OCCRP and other media stories have noted their extensive purchases in London, Moscow, the Czech Republic and Dubai.

A search through business records reveals that the Bucharest house is owned by a Romanian private company in which the Azerbaijani presidential family is involved via an offshore company. That private company has placed the whole house, more than 600 square meters, at the disposal of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, free of charge. It also enjoys tax-free status as the foundation’s home.