Ilham Aliyev goes all lengths to retain power

PanARMENIAN.Net - We have already said that the upcoming parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan will be very tense, despite the cheery statements of functionaries from the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party (YAP). The YAP holds closed hearings, invites political strategists from Moscow and employs various Russian politicians.

For example, MP from the Communist Party, Viktor Ilyukhin. It is worth recalling that during his years in the State Duma, Viktor Ilyukhin not once appeared in the focus of scandals.

In 1998 the newspaper “Moskovskie Novosti” stated that the parliamentarian had become chairman of the presidium of a legal organization, which gave grounds to accuse him of illegal occupation of lawyering and using his position of a deputy for personal gain.

In December of 1999 the media wrote about a murder attempt on Ilyukhin at the entrance to his house. Law enforcement officers investigating the case did not exclude that the crime was staged by a “victim” on the eve of the Duma elections.

In 2000 Viktor Ilyukhin was accused of embezzling funds of the movement “In support of the army, defense industry and military science”, of which he became leader after the death of General Lev Rokhlin.

In 2003 there appeared information on Ilyukhin being generously sponsored by entrepreneur and “King of Vodka” Yuri Scheffler, then in the FBI wanted list.

In 2008 to Ilyukhin there happened a story very loud and unpleasant - he was discovered to be involved in an affair of criminal community. In brief, such was the story. When the trial of major criminal figures of the Far East was being arranged, law enforcement and judicial authorities literally got buried in appeals from various petitioners, aimed, in fact, at the break-up of the case. For this purpose the criminal community had allocated 300 million rubles, and record-holder of the appeals in support of the thieves (more than 30 appeals to different addresses) was Viktor Ilyukhin, member of the Anti-Corruption Commission. The object of his special concern was one of the leaders of the criminal community Eduard Sakhnov (Sakhno); former prosecutor Viktor Ilyukhin defended his interests as a businessman and philanthropist, with special zeal. However, it did not help - Sakhno was sent to 25 years’ imprisonment (which was reduced by 3 years after cassation). For his strange activity Ilyukhin was chided by the Ethics Commission of the State Duma. As its chairman Alexander Gurov wrote in the magazine “Ogonyok”, “The Commission drew the deputy’s attention to the inadmissibility of appeals to the judicial authorities with specific requests in behalf of certain individuals.”

Indiscriminateness in media resources and people has not recently been a problem for the Azeri mass media and politicians, who do not even know who to “use” for anti-Armenian propaganda. However, as it is often the case, Baku can have as well misrepresented the words of the deputy. But one thing is clear: all is fair in the desire to cling to power. And because except for the anti-Armenian hysteria, official Baku has nothing to gain dividends on, then we have what we have.

We deliberately did not mention the other deputy of the State Duma Alexey Ostrovsky. But there is a time for things. We’ll simply say that his assistant Konstantin Zatulin quite disinterestedly speaks of the chairman of the commission for relations with compatriots, which speaks volumes.