The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation has called for investigation into whether 17 Black, the secret company owned by Yorgen Fenech, served as a bridge between the Azeri laundromat - a network of shell companies used to embezzle public funds out of Azerbaijan and pay bribes around the world - and high-level officials in Malta.

The call was made on the basis of details made available after the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) settled its prosecution for money laundering against Izzat Javadova, a cousin of Azerbaijan’s ruler Ilham Aliyev, and her husband Suleyman Javadov, son of Azerbaijan’s former deputy energy minister.

As part of the settlement, the NCA seized £4 million the couple received from Azerbaijani Laundromat shell companies.

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation obtained a registry filing of one of the shell companies cited in the NCA’s case. The filing for Hong Kong company Ago Limited stated that, from 2015 onwards, the entity was owned, on paper, by Azeri national Rufat Baratzada, a security guard at a construction site in Baku.

Baratzada’s details on Ago Limited’s filing are identical to those on filings of Mayor Trans Ltd, a Seychelles shell company that sent €1.4 million from its account at ABLV Bank in Latvia to 17 Black’s account at Noor Bank in Dubai, held in Yorgen Fenech’s name. The mechanisms, facilitators, and frontman involved in the payments to the Javadovs in the UK case are the same as those involved in the payments to 17 Black. 

17 Black was identified in a leaked e-mail as one of two sources of income for the Panama companies Hearnville and Tillgate, which were set up by Nexia BT for then Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister's chief of staff Keith Schembri.

This, the foundation said, suggested that payments transferred to 17 Black’s account at Noor Bank in Dubai originated from the Azerbaijani laundromat.