LONDON -- For years, Azerbaijani tycoon Anar Mammadov was known for partnering with Donald Trump on a Baku skyscraper, spending millions of dollars lobbying U.S. officials, and cashing in on lucrative state contracts with the ministry overseen by his powerful father, whom one U.S. diplomat described in a leaked cable as "notoriously corrupt."
His Trump tower project fell through, and his lobbying largesse in Washington has dried up. But Mammadov has found another outlet for his substantial wealth: British fast-food chicken.
An RFE/RL investigation has found that Mammadov, 43, has poured millions of dollars into a franchise of the American fried-chicken chain KFC in England, at times shielding his involvement through complex offshore financial structures.
His investment in the chain is part of a business and real estate portfolio in Britain that has included more than $30 million in property on some of London's most expensive streets, according to British land records obtained by Transparency International UK and reviewed by RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.
Most of this real estate was acquired during his father's tenure as transport minister in the oil-rich South Caucasus country, which ended with his effective firing in 2017 by authoritarian President Ilham Aliyev, whose own relatives have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in U.K. properties.
The issue of the Mammadov family's wealth has previously been raised by officials in the United States and Britain. In recent years, authorities in the United Kingdom have stepped up scrutiny of suspected illicit wealth flowing into the country, including from Azerbaijan, which consistently ranks near the bottom of Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index.
After a report first surfaced in the Azerbaijani media in late 2022 that Mammadov had acquired KFC restaurants in Britain, his father, former Transport Minister Ziya Mammadov, was quoted as denying that his son had a single restaurant in the United Kingdom.
"Whoever wrote that news should go and find that restaurant. Then I will donate that restaurant to that person. It's been like this for 30 years, they write nonsense," he was quoted as saying by the Azerbaijani pro-government news outlet Manset. "Anar does not have a restaurant in Britain."
But RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service investigation found that Anar Mammadov doesn't have just one KFC restaurant: He now owns at least 20 in northwestern England after launching his investment through an anonymous offshore firm more than a decade ago.
The younger Mammadov's political connections and the source of his wealth have previously raised red flags among Western lawmakers and regulators.
Azerbaijan's Aliyev, 62, has tightened his grip on the dynastic oil- and gas-rich country since succeeding his ailing father in 2003. During his reign, his relatives have built significant fortunes, thanks in part to lucrative state contracts in major sectors, such as air travel, construction, and natural resources.
Other high-profile Azerbaijanis with links to Aliyev's government have also amassed considerable wealth under his rule. A U.S. State Department report on the country's investment climate last year said that "a small group of government-connected holding companies dominate the economy."
Aliyev and other politically connected Azerbaijani insiders have repeatedly rejected allegations that their fortunes have been fueled by cronyism.
Azerbaijani Wealth Targeted In U.K.
In March, a British High Court judge ruled that the National Crime Agency (NCA) has a “good arguable case” that Azerbaijani lawmaker Javanshir Feyziyev used the proceeds of crime to purchase $50 million in London real estate and upheld a freezing order on the properties. Feyziyev denies any wrongdoing.
The wife of a jailed former Azerbaijani state banker is also fighting to prevent the possible NCA seizure of millions of dollars in real estate and jewelry she purchased in Britain, claiming she has also done nothing wrong.
Previously, the NCA had investigated President Aliyev’s cousin, Izzat Khanim Javadova, and her husband over nearly $20 million they received from opaque sources, including a sprawling underground money-movement system known as the Azerbaijani Laundromat. The couple settled with British authorities in 2021, agreeing to forfeit $5.5 million.
There is no publicly available evidence that Ziya or Anar Mammadov have ever faced corruption-related charges.
In a 2017 debate in the British Parliament, titled Money Laundering And Tax Evasion (Azerbaijan), a British member of parliament noted that Anar Mammadov was just 20 years old when he bought a $4 million home on London's swanky Bishops Avenue, a property he still owns and which has since been valued by at least one real-estate website at some $15 million.
Records analyzed by RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service also show that financial regulators in Guernsey in the British Channel Islands fined a corporate-services company for failing to identify Mammadov as a so-called "politically exposed person" due to his father's position.
Anar Mammadov did not respond to requests for comment about his real estate portfolio or his KFC restaurants in English towns and cities that include Liverpool, Wigan, Bolton, and Preston. Inquiries to KFC and its U.S.-based parent company, Yum! Brands, went unanswered as of publication.
Reached by telephone, Ziya Mammadov declined to comment on accusations against him concerning his time as Azerbaijan's transport minister. "Let anyone say what they want. God sees everything," the elder Mammadov told RFE/RL.
Asked about his earlier interview about his son's KFC business in Britain, Ziya Mammadov said, "Thank you, stay safe. Bye!" He then hung up.
From Trump Hotel To Fried Chicken
Anar Mammadov first began investing in British fast-food chicken in 2013, when he acquired a KFC operator now known as 1st Rate Investment (UK) Limited.
Financial filings in the years immediately after the acquisition initially listed the parent company as a BVI offshore firm and the ultimate beneficial owner as "unknown." In November 2016 -- three years after Mammadov bought the company -- 1st Rate Investment began listing its beneficiary as "A Mammadov."
At the time of his initial investment, Mammadov and his family had already built a fortune in part thanks to government largesse in the form of lucrative state contracts, including from the Transport Ministry his father had run since 2002.
At the time, Mammadov also presided over a Washington-based organization called the Azerbaijan America Alliance, which spent more than $12 million on lobbying efforts among U.S. officials and hewed closely to the Aliyev government's political lines.
For its 2012 gala dinner, which was attended by then-House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and 15 other members of Congress, the group spent $430,000, according to a 2013 filing under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act.
But Mammadov's most high-profile project was a partnership with Trump's company, the Trump Organization, on the construction of what the company described in a 2014 press release as a 33-floor luxury hotel and condominium tower in Baku with "spectacular views of the city and Caspian Sea." After Trump was elected U.S. president in 2016, the partnership triggered concerns among U.S. lawmakers over corruption allegations against the elder Mammadov.
In a 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Baku that was later leaked by WikiLeaks, a U.S. diplomat described Ziya Mammadov as "notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan."
Politically Connected Money
Previous investigations by RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service revealed that the business interests of Anar Mammadov and his relatives were closely linked to the Transport Ministry that his father oversaw.
Mammadov and his uncle, the former minister’s brother, were business partners with members of the family of the Baghlan Group, the contractor on a series of major initiatives by the Transport Ministry, including the importing of 1,000 London taxis to Baku, the construction of an international bus station, and highway construction. A 2013 RFE/RL report found that the company had several government contracts worth around $1.3 billion.
The company that Anar Mammadov chaired, ZQAN Holding, was also awarded Transport Ministry contracts, and he was previously listed as holding 81 percent of the shares in the Bank of Azerbaijan before divesting his shares to members of the family behind the Baghlan Group.
Mammadov did not respond to a request for comment at the time
Both the Trump development and the U.S. lobbying efforts soon went south for Mammadov.
In December 2016, a month after Trump's election, the Trump Organization ended its licensing deal for the hotel project, which was damaged in a 2018 fire and ultimately opened in December 2022 under the Ritz-Carlton brand.
Meanwhile, a former U.S. congressman who chaired Mammadov's Washington-based organization quit that same year, citing nonpayment. Congressional records do not show Mammadov or the organization, the Azerbaijan America Alliance, spending any lobbying money since 2015, according to the Washington-based transparency group Open Secrets.
After the elder Mammadov lost his post as transport minister in February 2017, the family's government contracts also ended.
Anar Mammadov's KFC business in Britain, however, was humming.
His KFC portfolio in England now totals at least 20 restaurants that he has owned through three subsidiaries of his U.K. company, which he has owned through an offshore firm in the British Virgin Islands.
U.K. Land Registry records show that Mammadov used these three subsidiaries -- Amber Restaurants Limited, BJR Foods Limited, and Colonel Foods Limited -- to lease 26 properties in Britain.
According to its most recent financial filings, Mammadov's 1st Rate Investments (UK) Limited reported average turnover of around $50 million in 2021 and 2022 and shareholder funds of $7 million in 2022.
Financial filings show that a company controlled by Mammadov in the British Virgin Islands, called 1st Rate Investments Limited, sent interest-free loans of more than $10 million to his KFC operations in Britain.
Mammadov later transferred millions of dollars from his KFC business back to his BVI firm in the form of loan repayments and dividends, the filings show.
The BVI-based 1st Rate Investments Limited was managed by a Guernsey-based fiduciary company called Hansard Limited, according to data from the Panama Papers leak published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
And it was Hansard's work with Mammadov that eventually landed the company in regulators' crosshairs.
The Case Of 'Mr A'
In December 2021, financial regulators in Guernsey issued several hundred thousand dollars in fines to Hansard and several of its directors, saying the firm had "failed to monitor and manage the financial crime risks associated with its customers."
While the Guernsey Financial Services Commission did not name Mammadov in its announcement of the penalty, it cited as an example of Hansard's negligence the case of a client identified as "Mr. A" whose profile matches that of the Azerbaijani KFC magnate.
The statement describes the client as a "high-net-worth individual" from a "high-risk country" and the "son of an oligarch and government minister" who was reportedly corrupt and allegedly had links to Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
The description of the client's father appears to reference the 2009 U.S. State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, which stated that Ziya Mammadov was assumed to be a "silent partner" in construction deals won by an Iranian businessman allegedly tied to the IRGC.
The Guernsey regulators found that Hansard had failed to undertake "reasonable measures to establish [the] source of wealth" of Mr. A prior to taking him on as a client, and had failed to identify him as a politically exposed person until two years after their business relationship started.
A Guernsey Financial Services Commission spokesperson declined to comment further on the case, citing "strict confidentiality obligations" in matters related to "firms for which it has regulatory oversight."
Hansard was not only linked to Mammadov's KFC business, but to his London real estate holdings as well.
In 2010, Mammadov purchased an office building on Conduit Street in London's wealthy Mayfair district for $17.2 million. Currently a proposed office development, the building once housed the East India Company and stands down the road from the famed Savile Row, known for its posh tailoring boutiques and the site of the famous Beatles rooftop concert in 1969.
Five years after purchasing the building, Mammadov transferred ownership to a BVI-based company called Four Investments Holdings Limited, which he owned through Hansard, according to data from the Panama Papers leak.
The building, which stands just off of Regent Street with its luxury shops and bustling crowds headed to and from Oxford Circus, is still owned by Four Investments Holding. But ultimate ownership of the company and the land is shielded behind a trust now administered from Gibraltar.
Hansard did not respond to a request for comment.
U.K. Land Registry records show that, including the Conduit Street office building, Mammadov has purchased at least $38 million in British real estate. That figure does not include the properties he has leased for his KFC restaurants due to the absence of valuations in property records.
He still owns the six-bedroom mansion on Bishops Avenue -- nicknamed Billionaire's Row -- in North London that he bought for $4 million in 2001 and which British lawmaker Margaret Hodge said during a 2017 parliamentary debate was valued at $8.8 million.
In 2012, meanwhile, he purchased a $17 million apartment on Grosvenor Crescent -- ranked the most expensive street in the United Kingdom in 2017 -- in London's swanky Belgravia neighborhood, down the street from Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace.
Land Registry records show that he sold the apartment at a loss for $8.5 million in 2019.
Golden Passport And 'Reputational Risk'
U.K. company records still list Anar Mammadov's nationality as Azerbaijani and his residence as Azerbaijan. Records reviewed by RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service show that he was previously rejected in an attempt to obtain an EU passport.
In 2015, as Azerbaijan was gripped by a financial crisis, Mammadov and his family turned to a self-described "citizenship planning" firm headquartered in Britain called Henley & Partners, which a 2022 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found had helped high-risk clients obtain citizenship in the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis.
Mammadov said in his application that he was seeking citizenship in Malta, an EU member, because it would afford him more freedom to travel and that he was interested in business opportunities in the island nation, according to leaked records obtained by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation and reviewed by RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.
In his application, Mammadov listed his occupation as the owner of a "major holding group of a franchise of ownership of several KFC branches." At the time, British company records listed the ultimate beneficial owner of Mammadov's KFC operator as "unknown."
Mammadov also said in the application that he had previously been rejected in his effort to obtain a St. Kitts and Nevis passport, the leaked records show.
On July 9, in written comments sent to RFE/RL after this article was first published, Henley & Partners said that Mammadov didn't acquire alternative citizenship or residency through this company.
The leaked records show that Henley & Partners commissioned a background report on Mammadov, leading the company to assess that proceeding with the businessman's application would "present a too-high reputational risk" both for the company and Maltese authorities.
