Jailed banker’s wife forfeits £14m London house and golf course after ‘McMafia’ order

The wife of a jailed banker has agreed to forfeit a £14m Knightsbridge house and a golf club after being targeted by the UK’s “McMafia” laws.

Zamira Hajiyeva – who spent more than £16m at Harrods in a decade and £600,000 in one day – was investigated by the National Crime Agency (NCA) for six years.

The agency said there was “no reasonable explanation” for how she paid for the properties and the cash likely came from fraud, embezzlement and money laundering.

She’s giving them up after being hit with the UK’s first unexplained wealth order (UWO) in 2018, introduced under so-called “McMafia” laws named after the BBC crime series and book.

Mrs Hajiyeva’s husband, Jahangir Hajiyev, was chairman of International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) from 2001 to 2015 but is now serving a 16-year sentence there for charges including fraud and embezzlement.

The NCA applied for a freezing order for the two properties in March 2021 and a civil recovery order in June 2023.

Last week, the court granted the latter order – meaning 70% of the property’s value must be forfeited. Mrs Hajiyeva had previously fought against the move.

The NCA said there were numerous examples of funds from the Azerbaijan bank being transferred through multiple accounts – a typical money laundering tactic.

It said “no reasonable explanation” was offered for how the Knightsbridge house and Mill Ride Golf Club in Ascot were bought.

“The purchase of the golf club was conducted through a complex structure of Luxembourg and Guernsey-registered companies, and by using offshore trusts in Guernsey and later, Cyprus,” said the NCA.

It believes the money for the house came from two IBA accounts – again concealed via multiple foreign bank accounts and the payments sent to the UK by an associate of Mr Hajiyev.

Despite the court deciding the properties were paid for using illicit funds, it did not make any finding on whether Mrs Hajiyeva knew where the money came from.

Previously released documents in the case revealed how she once splashed out £600,000 in a single day at Harrods as part of a £16m spending spree between 2006 and 2016.

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Jewellery worth £400,000 was also seized from Christie’s during the investigation as the auction house valued it for Mrs Hajiyeva’s daughter.

Tim Quarrelle, from the NCA, said officers had “worked tirelessly to track the complex movement of these funds across the international banking system, through shell companies in multiple jurisdictions”.

He added: “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.”