Ulvi Hasanli, director of anti-corruption investigative outlet Abzas Media, has been detained since November 2023 on multiple financial crime charges in relation to alleged receipt of Western donor funding.
Hasanli is one of at least 16 journalists and media workers – 15 of whom CPJ reported on in November and one whose case we confirmed in mid-December – charged with serious crimes between late 2023 and December 1, 2024, in a major crackdown on the independent press and civil society in Azerbaijan.
A former activist who co-founded Abzas Media in 2016, Hasanli was on a 2021 leaked list of individuals potentially targeted with Pegasus, spyware produced by the Israeli company NSO Group, according to the global investigative network Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Police in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, detained Hasanli outside his apartment at around 4:30 a.m. on November 20, 2023, as he was on his way to take an international flight. In a voice recording published by Abzas Media, Hasanli said he entered a taxi outside his home when a vehicle blocked the taxi’s path and masked men came out and grabbed him from the vehicle, punching him in the eye. The men took him to Baku City Police Department, where officers punched and kicked him and asked why Abzas Media writes about corruption, he said.
Later the same day, police searched Abzas Media’s editorial office, where they claimed to find 40,000 euros (US$43,770). Police also arrested Abzas Media consultant Mahammad Kekalov and, early the following morning, the outlet’s chief editor Sevinj Vagifgizi. A court ordered the three to be held in pretrial detention for four months on charges of conspiring to bring a large sum of money into the country unlawfully. Police subsequently also arrested Abzas Media journalists Nargiz Absalamova, Hafiz Babali, and Elnara Gasimova on the same charges.
On November 28, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the U.S., German, and French envoys and accused their embassies and organizations registered in those countries of illegally funding Abzas Media. Reports in Azerbaijani state and pro-government media used materials that apparently had been leaked from authorities’ investigation into Abzas Media to accuse the outlet’s staff of illegally bringing undeclared grants from foreign donor organizations into the country.
Hasanli and his colleagues denied the charges. A statement issued by Abzas Media said the charges were retaliation by Aliyev for “a series of investigations into the corruption crimes committed by the president of the country and his appointed officials.”
In the months prior to the arrests, Abzas Media published a series of investigations into the wealth of public figures such as the son-in-law and other family members of Aliyev, the head of Azerbaijan’s state security service, and the country’s foreign minister.
Abzas Media is one of three major outlets – including Toplum TV and Kanal 13 – from among Azerbaijan’s last remaining independent media targeted over alleged receipt of Western donor money between late 2023 and December 1, 2024. The crackdown has been linked to a decline in Azerbaijani-Western relations, as well as to authorities’ desire to silence criticism amid presidential elections, in which Aliyev secured a fifth consecutive term, and Azerbaijan’s hosting the 2024 United Nations climate change conference, COP29.
Azerbaijani Minister of Internal Affairs Vilayat Eyvazov told CPJ by email on November 30, 2023, that any claims that charges against the outlet’s staff were related to their work were “completely groundless.”
In August 2024 authorities brought seven new economic crime charges against the Abzas journalists, including money laundering and tax evasion. The new charges increase the maximum prison sentence the journalists could face to up to 12 years.
In early October, 2024, Hasanli’s wife, Rubaba Guliyeva, accused prison authorities of “systematic inhuman treatment” of Hasanli after he reported on the ill-treatment of other detainees in jail. Guliyeva said that Hasanli had been subject to orchestrated threats from fellow detainees, shoved against a wall and struck by a prison guard, and was allowed to see his family only from behind a glass screen. Hasanli has complained of “unbearable conditions” in jail.
As of late 2024, Hasanli remains in detention at the Baku Pretrial Detention Center, Sadygova told CPJ, adding that he does not have any health issues.
CPJ emailed the Office of the President of Azerbaijan and the Penitentiary Service for comment in November 2024 but did not receive any replies.