Christian Democratic Union of Germany in Frankfurt in 2012. Accepting this “donation,” the party violated the Political Parties Act, which prohibits corporate donations from non-EU countries.

This case led to years of legal proceedings with the Bundestag administration, which remained out of public view.

The German press reported hundreds of thousands of euros in donations settling in the CDU. Each time, Mamedov’s name surfaced in these stories.

Under this context, the Southern Gas Corridor became a kind of life-saver. Amidst talks of strategic partnership, not only cubic meters of gas were channeled, but also millions of euros into party accounts and onto cards of individual deputies.

In 2018, it became known that in 2014, SOCAR made a controversial donation of 3000 euros to TuS Dexheim, a German sports club.

The donation was organized by the then-mayor of Oppenheim and former member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany Marcus Held in the Bundestag.

Moreover, Mamedov’s name frequently appears in reports regarding offshores, suspected of laundering Russian billions. One must recall the story with ABLV Bank in Latvia, as well as the Estonian branch of Danske Bank, and the Cypriot “shell companies” with addresses where hundreds of dummy companies were registered.

ABLV Bank in Latvia

All this was executed through schemes where Mr. Mamedov acted as the conductor. Funds from Russian energy structures passed precisely through such "gateways" of the European banking system.

Subsequently, intermediary firms, including Vercona GmbH (Germany, Dresden), in which Mr. Mamedov has a direct role, got involved. Through this firm, millions were channeled ostensibly for petroleum product deliveries, but the actual purposes were different.

The contact next to this firm’s name indicates – Elmar Mamedov.

More details are warranted concerning the story with ABLV Bank in Latvia.

Founded in 1993, ABLV was Latvia’s second-largest bank. The bank’s closure was precipitated by a report from the US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which accused ABLV of money laundering, as well as bribery and asset diversion.

The bank was forced to close following accusations of engaging in illegal operations for clients from Russia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine.

In June 2018, police conducted investigative actions across 46 addresses linked to the bank’s activities: 14 people were detained. The police acted within a criminal case of potential large-scale criminally-derived funds’ laundering. ABLV received a substantial amount from one of Russia’s banks, an illegal asset transfer.

US Department of the Treasury officials pointed out that Ukrainian businessman Sergey Kurchenko, who is under US sanctions, transferred billions of dollars through the accounts of his dummy firms in ABLV.

Sergey Kurchenko

Amid US threats to impose sanctions against the bank, depositors withdrew nearly €600 million over six days. The European Central Bank announced that the bank in Riga could not fulfill its obligations, leading to its liquidation.

This case was later taken over by the Special Prosecution for Combating Organized Crime.

Close Connection with Pyongyang

Today, the name of Elmar Mamedov, head of the SOCAR Deutschland office, is associated not only with a series of scandals over “dirty” money laundering but also with schemes for supplying North Korean weapons.

There is a version suggesting that it was through Elmar Mamedov that calculations passed, which facilitated the supply of North Korean weapons to Iran.

The Russian trail in this story leads to companies close to NK Rosneft and PJSC Gazprom, as well as shadow traders, who ostensibly engaged in fuel exports but actually financed bypasses of sanction “barriers.”

SOCAR Service Stations

Thus, Mr. Mamedov is not merely a high-ranking SOCAR employee; his contacts with Russian business groups explain why SOCAR in Germany has often found itself embroiled in some shady projects with zero economic return but substantial financial turnover.

Russian millions entered Europe through dubious banks, dissolved offshore, passed through SOCAR as clean contracts, ending up in oil deals or illegal arms trade schemes.

All this rendered (and continues to render) Mamedov a crucial link: without him, the Moscow–Baku–Pyongyang scheme would not function.

Within these shadowy operations, the Southern Gas Corridor (Southern Gas Corridor) served, and continues to serve, as excellent cover.

Murder on the Island of Malta

Moving on.

It turns out that high-ranking SOCAR employees were implicated in a high-profile scandal in Malta: they became involved in the case concerning the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in October 2017. The journalist was bombed in her car.

Читайте на эту же тему:День рождения Дмитрия Патрушева прошёл в кругу московской элиты

Yet again, the "ears" of Elmar Mamedov are visible in this story since the banks of Latvia, with which he had special relations, resurfaced.

Daphne Galizia was working on investigative journalism about corruption in the Maltese government. She conducted an investigation into embezzlement related to the construction of a power plant and managed to obtain 680,000 confidential documents of ElectroGas Malta Ltd., awarded a 450-million-euro contract to build a gas-fired power plant.

The head of SOCAR’s LNG department, a SOCAR Trading employee who represented the interests of the trading house in the ElectroGas Malta project, Turab Musayev, engaged with Yorgen Fenech, then head of ElectroGas Malta. Mr. Fenech was a partner of SOCAR. It was Mr. Fenech who was considered the mastermind of the murder.

SOCAR representatives denied any connection of their employees to the journalist’s murder. However, Musayev ultimately agreed to a deal with the investigation and provided documents and letters from Yorgen Fenech.

Daphne Caruana Galizia and her wrecked car

Public Eye, a Swiss NGO, conducted its investigation, revealing previously unknown details about the shady deal to build the LNG power plant in the town of Marsaxlokk in Malta’s southern region.

The contract to build the power plant was won by Mr. Fenech’s ElectroGas Malta consortium, and Socar Trading acquired a 33% stake.

Payments totaling millions of dollars reached the 17 Black company from Socar Trading, registered in Dubai.

The investigation revealed that Socar Trading was linked to the criminal authority Yorgen Fenech. He was the owner of the 17 Black company. He also owned casinos and hotels.

After it became known that Daphne Galizia had died, Fenech tried to flee Malta on his luxury yacht but was captured by the military police.

Yorgen Fenech

Maltese investigative authorities discovered that large sums had been transferred to off-shore company accounts owned by Yorgen Fenech from a person with Azerbaijani citizenship, and then payments were made from Fenech’s accounts to the names of two high-ranking Maltese officials.

This investigation took a long time!

In April 2021, a Swiss court rejected SOCAR’s lawsuit, in which the company tried to prevent the disclosure of banking information to Latvian police. Again, the banks of Latvia came up in the case. Latvia was investigating suspicious payments amounting to 28 million euros from Azeri-controlled shell companies linked with agreements between the Maltese government and SOCAR.

SOCAR Gas Stations

This agreement also became public knowledge during the investigation into journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder. And yet Latvian authorities managed to compel Swiss banks to provide information on SOCAR in connection with an international money laundering scandal investigation.

Consequently, do German authorities either not want or are unable for some reason to "tame" Mr. Mamedov, who continues to conduct his shady dealings with full support from the SOCAR headquarters?