Revealed: £200m of UK property owned by Aliyev family
The children of autocrats have been revealed as the ultimate owners of £250million worth of British properties after new transparency rules allowed them to be identified, Daily Mail reports.
New laws require offshore companies that own property in England and Wales to name their ultimate owner in a public register of overseas entities. Previously this had often been kept secret.
Analysis of the Register of Overseas Entities by The Times revealed that nearly £200m of UK property is owned by the family of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and families of their political appointees.
This includes £21m of property in London controlled by Mr Aliyev's daughters, Leyla and Arzu, who were educated at Queen's College for girls in Westminster.
Their father has ruled Azerbaijan since 2003, and oversees what think-tank Freedom House describes as an 'authoritarian regime' where 'corruption is rampant, and the formal political opposition has been weakened by years of persecution'.