Subhan Hasanli: “I have paid taxes, social contributions, and unemployment insurance payments—so how is this money illegal? How is it considered criminally obtained?”

The head of the Social Rights Center, lawyer Subhan Hasanli, has been charged with a criminal case, and a search warrant has been issued for his arrest.

The Azerbaijani Prosecutor General's Office announced the charges.

According to the statement, Hasanli is accused of illegal entrepreneurship, tax evasion, abuse of official authority, money laundering, and official forgery.

The indictment states that in 2020-2021, he signed contracts with the U.S. humanitarian organization “FH1360” and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, thereby bringing grant funds into the country under the guise of "service contracts" and legalizing them.

However, Subhan Hasanli has denied the accusations. He emphasized that since taxes, social contributions, and unemployment insurance payments were made during the work period, he does not understand how the funds were deemed illegal or criminally obtained.

“I received 5,000 euros and 10,000 dollars. I paid a 20% tax on each, along with social contributions, to the state. In total, I paid approximately 5,200 AZN in taxes alone. Moreover, the State Tax Service conducted two inspections related to our work and found no issues. If these payments were illegal, why didn’t the State Tax Service notify us of any wrongdoing during their audits? When ABB processed the funds to the VAT-registered entity, did they not see it?” the lawyer questioned in a post on his Facebook account.

Subhan Hasanli also stated that various government agencies had received service contracts from the FHI360 organization alongside him.

“One of the individuals who received service contract-based projects from FHI360 is a member of the Supervisory Board of the State Support Agency for NGOs. The beneficiary of one of these projects was TƏBİB (the Management Union of Medical Territorial Units). In another project, training sessions were conducted for employees of the Ministry of Justice. So why didn’t the Ministry of Justice question whether this was a grant and why a service contract was signed? One of these projects even had the support of the State Tax Service—at the highest leadership level,” Hasanli noted.

Since November 2023, civil society and media representatives in Azerbaijan have been arrested en masse. According to the latest report by human rights defenders, the number of political prisoners in the country has reached 360.