UK’s business links to Karabakh revealed in new investigation

PanARMENIAN.Net - The British government supported a London-listed mining company that stands to profit from the recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, openDemocracy reports.

The British embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, offered to help Anglo Asian Mining after diplomats learned that the company was set to secure access to mining concessions in Nagorno-Karabakh and other adjacent districts. Thousands of people were killed and many Armenian residents fled during last autumn’s war over Karabakh, which resulted in territorial gains for Azerbaijan.

The UK’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, James Sharp, met with Anglo Asian at the height of the conflict, according to email correspondence released under Freedom of Information. After the meeting, Anglo Asian sent Sharp a follow-up email containing information about gold deposits in Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories.

The ambassador also received an update from Anglo Asian about sensitive post-ceasefire developments at a gold mine in a border district, as part of an email chain titled “Anglo Asian and the land of opportunity”.

Embassy officials later offered to discreetly raise issues and questions on Anglo Asian’s behalf at a meeting with Azerbaijan’s state-owned mining company. During the meeting, trade officials sought to identify opportunities for UK firms in the country’s mining sector.

The British government has heavily redacted the emails, refusing to disclose their full contents as they could not only harm the company’s interests, but also “harm the international relations of the UK and both Azerbaijan and Armenia and the interest of the UK in these countries.”

Anglo Asian has held contracts with the Azerbaijani government to exploit goldfields in the country for 20 years, but the company, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market, was until recently unable to access its concessions in Nagorno-Karabakh. Since the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the 1990s, those territories had been under Armenian control. Azerbaijan’s offensive against Armenia last autumn has brought these concessions under Azerbaijani control – and therefore under potential future Anglo Asian management.

“The UK has been consistently clear that we support the OSCE Minsk Group’s work to facilitate a lasting end to the conflict,” the Foreign Office said in a statement to openDemocracy, referencing the international body that mediates between Armenia and Azerbaijan. “Greater prosperity across the region is an important part of securing a sustainable solution to the conflict.”

In November 2020, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned of “possible war crimes” in the conflict zone – and further reports have emerged of brutal treatment, including the extrajudicial execution of Armenian civilians and captured soldiers. Baku has also retained a number of Armenian prisoners of war since the conflict, and has subjected them to cruel and inhumane treatment.

“The UK government has failed to front up to the truth that the pursuit of global trade and investment opportunities can clash with its obligation to protect human rights,” said Tom Wills, corporate accountability and trade project manager at the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre.

The British embassy in Baku has maintained a relationship with Anglo Asian for several years. Successive UK ambassadors to Azerbaijan, which is widely considered an authoritarian state with endemic elite corruption, severe limits on free political contest and freedom of the press, have visited the company’s Gedabek gold and copper mine.

On its website and in other promotional materials, Anglo Asian maintains that Azerbaijan is a “politically stable democracy” with “a good human rights record.”

Azerbaijan’s gold mining sector has been dogged by allegations of nepotism. In 2012, Azerbaijani investigative journalists revealed that their country’s government had awarded stakes in gold fields to a shell company ultimately owned by the daughters of President Ilham Aliyev.