Corrupt Aliyevs cruise on multi-million-dollar SOCAR yachts while Muscat government uses Maltese taxpayer money to guarantee SOCAR’s massive bank loans

While Muscat guarantees Electrogas Malta Ltd’s loan using €360 million in public funds, one of its shareholders, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, is currently burning up hundreds of thousands of euros a day on yachts for the corrupt ruling family of Azerbaijan, the Aliyevs, and their cronies.

The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) owners a third of Electrogas Malta Ltd.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reports on its portal that friends and family of President Ilham Aliyev
make free use of two yachts worth US$59 million, which for some strange reason are owned by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), the organisation which is supposed to manage Azerbaijan’s oil wealth for its citizens.

The yachts cost around US$12 million a year to run and maintain, and burn up US$2,000 in fuel per hour.

Former crew members on one of the yachts told the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project that Aliyev, his family and their “inner circle” use the yachts on the French Riviera. Separately, other former crew members told the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) that they were often “sent on long trips across the Mediterranean to mislead media or just so the Azerbaijani VIPs could have lunch on the boats – at a cost of more than $100,000 in fuel”.

Joseph Muscat with Ilham Aliyev in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan