The proprietor of Mill Experience Golf Membership in Berkshire has been compelled to forfeit the asset after the Excessive Court docket dominated that the cash used to buy the membership in 2013 was obtained from fraudulent actions.
Zamira Hajiyeva is the topic of the UK’s first ever Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO) regarding a London home and the Ascot-based golf membership, which have been lately collectively valued at £26.5 million, that she is deemed to personal.
Regardless of the courtroom deciding the properties have been paid for utilizing illicit funds, it didn’t make any discovering on whether or not Mrs Hajiyeva knew the place the cash got here from.
Hajiyeva, 60, is the spouse of Jahangir Hajiyev, the previous chairman of the state-owned Worldwide Financial institution of Azerbaijan, who’s at present serving a 15-year jail sentence for defrauding the financial institution out of as much as £2.2bn. He was jailed in 2016.
Hajiyeva misplaced a Excessive Court docket problem to at least one unexplained wealth order that pertains to a five-bedroom home in central London that she purchased for £11.5 million in 2009 by means of an organization registered within the British Virgin Islands. She has now been served with a second unexplained wealth order on Mill Experience Golf Membership, which was purchased in 2013 for £10.5 million.
CLUB TO BE SOLD AT AUCTION, BUT REMAINS OPEN
A spokesperson for the UK’s Nationwide Crime Company mentioned: “The acquisition of the golf membership was carried out by means of a fancy construction of Luxembourg and Guernsey-registered firms, and by utilizing offshore trusts in Guernsey and later, Cyprus.”
The NCA utilized for a freezing order for the 2 properties in March 2021 and a civil restoration order in June 2023. Each belongings will now be bought at public sale.
The federal government will get 70% of the proceeds, minus the NCA’s prices, with the rest restored to Hajiyeva below the phrases of a settlement settlement. The precise quantity recovered will rely upon what the belongings are bought for.
Mill Experience continues to function as regular, with most members unaware of the small print of the membership’s proprietor, who has by no means visited the membership and doesn’t play golf.
Mill Experience opened in 1990 and boasts an 18-hole, 6,861-yard parkland course designed by Donald Metal. It appeared in a number of UK Prime 100 Programs record when it was first constructed and has hosted quite a few skilled tournaments over time.
The membership’s web site says that it at present has no ready record for membership and doesn’t cost a becoming a member of charge. A customer inexperienced charge on weekdays is £55, rising to £70 at weekends.
The membership has modified arms a number of occasions in its 34-year historical past. Its authentic builders have been unable to make a industrial success of the enterprise, and it was ultimately bought by Barclays Financial institution to Lazian Ltd, whose foremost shareholders was an Indonesian businessman.
Lazian bought the membership to The Nation Membership Group in 2003, which ran it for ten years earlier than promoting it on for £10.5 million to Jeffrey & Hillary UK Ltd, a Studying-based firm whose majority shareholder is Chinese language businessman Jeffrey Chao, chairman of IT networking giants TP-Hyperlink.
It isn’t clear at what level Hajiyeva took over the possession, or whether or not she was a part of the consortium that put collectively the bid.
Attorneys motion for Hajiyeva mentioned: “The settlement concerned no discovering of reality by the courtroom about our shopper’s information, nonetheless much less involvement, in relation to those properties.”
They mentioned Hajiyeva had settled the proceedings as a result of it had been “not possible to defend them” as a result of incapacity to acquire paperwork that have been “probably essential to the case” from her husband throughout his imprisonment in Azerbaijan.
