In 2012 ESI published “Caviar Diplomacy – How Azerbaijan silenced the Council of Europe” to sound an alarm. The official reaction was disappointing.
Now, ESI launches its second report, “The European Swamp (Caviar Diplomacy part 2) Prosecutors, corruption and the Council of Europe”.
The report reveals the organized corruption mechanisms of the Azerbaijani leadership, which included dozens of high ranking European officials. The investigation names the Spanish politician, Pedro Agramunt, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and the Italian politician and former Chairman of the EPP group in the PACE, Luca Volontè.
This time ESI provides the names of members of the parliamentary assembly who paid bribes – including Elkhan Suleymanov, the mastermind behind this policy in Strasbourg. ESI describes in detail how the corruption of MPs proceeded, from early visits with precious gifts meant to test the beneficiaries’ reactions, to long-term contracts involving huge sums of money.
