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  • The wife of a jailed Azerbaijani banker who spent millions in London's high-end Harrods department store lost a legal challenge Wednesday against Britain's test-case "unexplained wealth" probe. Three judges in the Court of Appeal quashed Zamira Hajiyeva's complaint and allowed the National Crime Agency (NCA) to continue freezing her property and some assets. Hajiyeva's case is being watched closely for signs of success in Britain's battle against money laundering and investment of ill-gotten gains in London property. The 56-year-old mother of three was the target of the first set of "unexplained wealth orders" (UWO) issued by the NCA in February 2018. Her husband Jahangir was jailed in 2016 for 15 years in Baku for embezzling money from the International Bank of Azerbaijan -- a state-controlled finance house he headed for 15 years. Investigators suspect that the £16.3 million ($21.2 million or 19.3 million euros) she had spent at Harrods over a decade and the £22 million she invested in two London mansions were illegally obtained. She was arrested in November 2018 and then released on bail. She is currently fighting an extradition request by Azerbaijan. Hajiyeva says her husband's trial in the oil-rich Caspian Sea nation was unfair and should not be used as grounds for the NCA's financial information request. But Judge Nigel Davis ruled that it was "unlikely" that her husband's status as a state employee "would have been sufficient to generate funds used to purchase" one of the two properties under review. Davis added that the financial explanations submitted by Hajiyeva's legal team "posed more questions to the source of his wealth than it answered," according to a transcript provided by the Law360 corporate law organisation. NCA economic crimes department director Sarah Pritchard called the Court of Appeal ruling "a significant result". "It will set a helpful precedent for future UWO cases," Pritchard said in a statement. But the crime fighting agency said its immediate goal was to get Hajiyeva to cooperate. "We are ultimately looking for Mrs Hajiyeva to comply with the original order of February 2018 to explain the source of the funds used to purchase her property, pending any further right of appeal that may granted," NCA investigator Andy Lewis said. The NCA has issued two separate UWOs in her case. But the agency had only issued four sets of UWOs since their introduction in January 2018 because of the legal difficulty in collecting sufficient evidence for their release. "Since their introduction in 2018, UWOs have not been widely used and this appeal was a test case for whether they could withstand a concerted challenge," the Kingsley Napley law firm's criminal litigator Ed Smyth said. "This decision provides a real boost to the NCA and other agencies in their fight against suspected illicit assets, and will likely whet their appetite for more." A UWO can only be applied to someone from outside the European Economic Area -- a group of nations that includes the European Union and three other states -- who holds a position of power that makes them liable to corruption. Hajiyeva has lived in Britain since 2010. Her attorney argued in December that she cannot be considered a "person of power" in Azerbaijan. The law firm representing Hajiyeva did not immediately respond to a request for comment. zak/phz/har
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  • UK pursuit of 'unexplained wealth' clears legal hurdle
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