4. Caviar diplomacy exposed and limited concessions
Further actions followed in April 2018, when PACE released a 219-page investigative report into allegations of corruption involving its members and Azerbaijani officials. The independent panel of judges who investigated the allegations concluded that several former and current PACE members had acted in breach of PACE’s code of conduct, finding “a strong suspicion of corruption“.
The report highlighted the role of high-profile figures. Former PACE President Pedro Agramunt, already discredited after a controversial trip to Syria in 2017, was identified as playing “a key role” in orchestrating voting favourable to Azerbaijan. Italian MP Luca Volonte was singled out as a central figure in undermining a PACE report on political prisoners. In 2021, Volonte was sentenced by an Italian court to four years in prison for accepting bribes from Azerbaijani sources.
Following the report’s findings and undeniable evidence of organised corruption, PACE adopted a series of reforms to restore credibility and prevent future misconduct, including a stronger code of conduct and new transparency and lobbying rules.
Mounting pressure from the Council of Europe, coupled with the fallout of the corruption scandal, eventually pushed the Azerbaijani government to make limited concessions. In August 2018, Ilgar Mammadov was conditionally released from prison. However, his conviction was not formally quashed until 2020, reflecting the government’s reluctance to fully comply with ECtHR rulings.
Even then, the outcome was only a partial victory. The authorities deliberately separated Mammadov’s case from a larger group of related cases, later referred to as the Mammadli group. While Mammadov and fellow activist Rasul Jafarov had their convictions overturned in accordance with Strasbourg judgments, many others did not. Several convictions from the group remained in effect, and in some cases, repression intensified. Notably, Mammadli – one of the original applicants – was re-arrested on new politically motivated charges.
Between 2017 and 2023, Azerbaijan maintained restrictive legislation regulating civil society operations and access to funding. Although underground NGOs and grassroots initiatives were mainly tolerated during this period, their activities remained precarious and exposed to state interference. At the same time, many observers believed that the authorities might be softening their approach to civil society, as the space for informal activism appeared to be expanding.
However, attempts at official dialogue with opposition forces, launched by the Presidential Administration, attracted only limited participation and produced negligible results. Paradoxically, even as the government framed these talks as efforts to open space for dissenting voices, it simultaneously adopted a new law on political parties that further restricted the functioning of the political opposition. It was followed by a new, even more restrictive media legislation, passed in 2021 despite criticism from both local and international organisations.
In early 2020, PACE rapporteur Thorhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir of Iceland formally presented her report on the continuing problem of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, sharply criticising Baku’s failure to implement ECtHR judgments and warning that the convictions still stood in the lead-up to national elections, thereby undermining democratic legitimacy. Following her fact-finding visit in 2019, she initially noted a “constructive” tone from authorities, but later deplored their refusal to follow through on reforms.
The report prompted both institutional and public backlash. PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights endorsed the findings. At the same time, Azerbaijani officials – including chair of the Azerbaijani delegation, MP Samad Seyidov – denounced her statements as “unacceptable,” reflecting mounting tensions between PACE’s human rights mandate and Baku’s resistance to international scrutiny.