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The Criminal Court in Strasbourg continued hearing the case of “Alinca and others” on May 17, which is linked to the “European Information Human Rights Center” organisation, registered in the city.

This criminal case is interesting as it had been established in the French city of Strasbourg by Eynulla Fatullayev, an Azerbaijani journalist and the editor-in-chief of haqqin.az online news website, which is allegedly in direct affiliation with the Office of the President of Azerbaijan.

Defendants in this case are the vice chairman of the organisation Mustafa Alinca and his wife Leyla Alinca, who have allegedly been acting under orders from Fatullayev, as well as Thomas Pilz, who is the foreign correspondent for haqqin.az in Germany and member of the anarchist movement «Occupy Frankfurt».

Panorama.am has been publishing stories about this controversy since 2014.

The correspondent of Pastinfo agency in Strasbourg, present at the court hearing, reported that the court session was attended by Mustafa and Leyla Alinca with their lawyers and the lawyer of  Thomas Pilz.
As the judge, assigned to the case, mentioned during the hearing, the organisation established in 2013 has evaded from paying taxes during the entire period of its activities.

The financial resources allocated for the organisation, including the salaries, were made by wired transfers through Western Union system from Azerbaijan by Eynulla Fatullayev. The payments were made not to the bank account of the organisation, but made payable to Mustafa and Leyla Alinca through Western Union money transfer system in order to evade taxes.

When the judge asked the defendants who was Fatullayev and why would he establish such an organisation, the lawyer of Leyla Alinca responded that he had been a very active journalist who had established similar organisations in Azerbaijan, Turkey and elsewhere in Europe.

Then the judge asked where Fatullayev could possibly have got the money which he would transfer by Western Union system, and Mustafa Alinca responded that they had been asking for years about the origins of that money, but never received a reply.

The judge underlined that there was no relevant information on what the organisation, financed from Azerbaijan, had been doing in this entire time period; and that the organisation was simply a fraud. Mustafa Alinca, who works as translator, has also been indicted for offering translation services in the office of the organisation without declarations.

The prosector also raised these issues, underlining that it was not clear why the Azerbaijanis would support this organisation financially, which had been established under a name tag that was so close to Europe: “European Information Human Rights Center”. Yet, the organisation had no connection to its name. The prosecutor asked where did the money the Alinca family had been receiving was coming from. The only known fact is that the money had been transferred from Azerbaijan by a single person – Eynulla Fatullayev.

The prosecutor argued that in 2014-2015 the Alinca couple paid tens of visits to Azerbaijan and Turkey, bringing cash money from there. The activities undertaken under the name of the organisation and the Alinca couple, including booking airtickets, had been made by cash payments, which, according to the prosecutor, did not serve the purposes of the organisations, but utilised for Alinca family and “other goals”.
The prosecutor solicitied the court to issue non-custodial punishment for Leyla Alinca and issue conditional sentencing of 10 months with a fine of 5000 euroes

For fraud, tax evasion and offering translation services without due declarations the prosecutor solicited the court to issue conditional sentencing of two years with a fine of 15000 euroes for Mustafa Alinca. The prosecutor also asked the court to issue a foreign travels ban from the territory of France for Mustafa Alinca as well as ban on offering translation services and other trade and industrial activity for five years.

The judgement in this case are expected to be delivered on June 21.

According to the materials of the case, Eynulla Fatullayev and other members of the organisation established in Strasbourg, the political capital of Europe, which based on its Charter should rather have monitored and defended human rights in Europe, have directly used the entity to undertake or support financially events and activities of anti-Semitic and anti-Armenian propaganda, have falsified documents and appropriated funds.

The “European Information Human Rights Center”, chartered in Strasbourg and financed from Baku and Ankara, has been a fake organisation, whose leaders are now being charged with money laundering, in the past initiated a number of public rallies, including of anti-Semitic and anti-Russian nature.

In part, the organisation had also been supported financially by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation in Azerbaijan.