Ilham Rahimov
In 1999, almost immediately after Putin was appointed as the Chairman of the Russian Government, Rahimov left his position as a vice-rector at the Higher Diplomatic College in Baku and started business in the commercial real estate sector.
[3][4][5][1] Putin's and Rahimov's close circle of friends also included Victor Khmarin (future Rahimov's business partner and entrepreneur close to the government), Vitaly Mozyakov [ru] (a lieutenant general of justice), Nikolai Egorov (co-founder of the law firm "Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners" and entrepreneur), and Alexander Bastrykin (chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia).
[1] After Vladimir Putin was appointed Prime Minister in November 1999, Ilham Rahimov began actively engaging in business and left his position as a vice-rector of the Higher Diplomatic College in Baku.
In 2011, the hotel 'Crimean Breeze' was opened (Russian: Крымский бриз), comprising a complex of elite villas and apartments, with the cost of stay in 2014 ranging from 120 to 300 thousand rubles per night.
[1][8][4][9] In 2015, Ilham Rahimov, in partnership with two of his university classmates and friends of Vladimir Putin, Victor Khmarin and Nikolai Egorov, founded the company "Investment Solutions".
An investigation by the Anti-Corruption Foundation revealed that in 2019, the company provided approximately 5 billion rubles to the St. Petersburg firm "Binom" (owned by oligarch Yury Kovalchuk) for the construction of "Putin's Palace" in Gelendzhik.
[10] From the early 2000s until 2018, Ilham Rahimov had shares in the Kievskaya Ploshchad [ru] holding, owned by billionaires God Nisanov and Zarakh Iliev.
Since 1999, the joint business of God Nisanov and Zarakh Iliev, which began with wholesale trading at the Cherkizovsky Market, has significantly expanded.
[11] Rahimov owned shares (approximately 10-15%) in each major holding project, managing leading Moscow markets, shopping centers, and hotels.
[3][1][12] The fortune of each of the holding's founders, Zarakh Iliev and God Nisanov, is estimated by Forbes in March 2024 at $3.3 billion.
[15] In 2015, it was revealed that the company "Trade Investments," part of the "Kievskaya Ploshchad" structure and in which Rahimov also had a share, won a 4 billion rubles tender announced by Moscow authorities for the construction of multifunctional migration centers.
[16] However, a representative of Nisanov and Iliev denied the accusations that Ilham Rahimov used his acquaintance with Vladimir Putin for business benefits.
[17] Exact information about the co-owners is hidden through a chain of offshore companies in the Cayman and the British Virgin Islands.
In 2020, amid the escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh, an incident known as the "apricot war" occurred at the "Food City" market, controlled by "Kievskaya Ploshchad".
[20][21] Later, in an interview with the Azerbaijani media Musavat, Rahimov stated that the damage inflicted on the Armenian side amounted to "hundreds of millions" (rubles).
Safarov is an Azerbaijani officer convicted of murdering Armenian Gurgen Margaryan during language courses in Hungary.
As of 2019, Rahimova lived in Moscow on Klimashkina Street [ru] in an apartment previously belonging to the founder of "Capital Group" Vladislav Doronin.
After the death of his wife, he built a hospital in her memory in his native village of Jilovdarly in the Tovuz district of Azerbaijan.
