Superprime Knightsbridge mansion seized by crime agency

A notorious high roller has been hit with the UK’s first unexplained wealth order (UWO) and been forced to forfeit her multi-million pound Knightsbridge home after providing “no reasonable explanation” for the source of the money used to pay for it.

Zamira Hajiyeva, who became famous for her huge spending sprees at Harrods, is the wife of Jahangir Hajiyev, the disgraced former chairman of International Bank of Azerbaijan. He is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence in Azerbaijan for offences including misappropriation, abuse of office, fraud and embezzlement.

NCA will deploy all the powers available to identify, pursue and recover the proceeds of crime.”

The complex case has taken six years to come to fruition and involved tracking funds through a network of accounts and companies across the world.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) believe most of the funds originated from two specific International Bank of Azerbaijan accounts. They arrived in the UK via accounts set up in Cyprus, Estonia and Switzerland in the names of companies with no recorded link to Mr Hajiyev.

Complex web

A British Virgin Islands (BVI) company was then used to purchase the house before the property was transferred into an offshore BVI trust.

The NCA applied for a property freezing order in 2021 and in June 2023, the it filed a claim for civil recovery at the High Court.

On Thursday 1 August this year, the civil recovery order was granted, resulting in the forfeiture of 70% of the value of the property. A neighbouring property of the same size is for sale at £7.7 million.

Tim Quarrelle, Branch Commander for Asset Denial at the NCA, said: “This result comes almost six and a half years after we served Mrs Hajiyeva with the first unexplained wealth order ever granted, and highlights our commitment to using all the tools at our disposal to combat the flow of illicit money into, and through, the UK.”