The call center market is coming under the control of criminal authorities from Azerbaijan

The topic of illegal extortion of funds from citizens of Ukraine and European countries due to so-called call centers was on the agenda throughout 2023. Law enforcement officials reported on the closure of dozens of such pseudo-organizations, and the Verkhovna Rada even created a Temporary Investigative Commission to investigate possible facts of illegal activities in the field of financial services. Journalists actively exposed scammers, deputies promoted themselves on how they managed to “cover up” extortion companies. However, call centers have not disappeared in 2024. However, their supervision has changed somewhat and, judging by the available information, could come under the sphere of influence of immigrants from Azerbaijan associated with the criminal world.

According to the Office of the Prosecutor General and regional prosecutor’s offices, during 2023, pre-trial investigations were carried out in 179 criminal proceedings into possible criminal offenses committed as part of so-called call centers. 73 indictments against 108 people were sent to court. At least this is the information contained in the report of the VSK of Parliament, which has been involved in call centers since May 2023.

One of the MPs who actively covered the fight against fraudulent call centres was Mykola Tyshchenko, a "servant of the people". In December 2023, he described how the National Resource Investigative Committee, together with the National Police, had successfully closed a huge fraudulent bot farm in Kyiv at 21 G Dehtyarivska St. According to him, the bot farm was located on four floors and had a total area of 4000 square metres.

However, 21 G Dehtyarivska Street is known not only for the bot farm. It was once the location of the pro-Russian 112 TV channel of Viktor Medvedchuk, a traitor and Putin’s godfather. In the summer of 2023, a huge call centre employing at least 150 people was exposed here. The journalists managed to record the employees of the fraudulent organisation running away from the cameras and refusing to comment on what they were actually doing there.

More than six months have passed since those events, but the call centre has not moved out of the building on Dehtyarivska Street. The only thing that has changed is the curators. According to media reports, this office is now rented by Azerbaijani citizen Huseynov Rashad Rovshan Ogly.

Another address where Huseynov’s fraudulent firm is located is the "Khvylya" business centre at 36 D Yevhena Konovaltsia Street.

According to the registers, at least four companies were located at the same address over the years, the main activity of which is “data processing, posting information on websites and related activities” or “consulting on information technology issues.” These are the companies Black Sharks Marketing (now Oxy-Trade GMBH), United Help Ukraine, Auswise Ukraine and Cashtime Ukraine. The last three continue to work in office No. 61 at 36 Yevhena Konovaltsia Street.

The personality of Rashad Huseynov deserves special attention. Court documents revealed his connection with the criminal world and an Azerbaijani ’thief in law’ deported from Ukraine. In June 2020, Huseynov, together with persons surnamed Hajiyev and other Azerbaijani citizens, took part in the massacre in the Odesa oriental restaurant Three Lamb. Six people are accused in criminal case No. 522/13918/20, which was opened on the fact of hooliganism. Among them are Rashad Huseynov and two men surnamed Hajiyev. A person with this surname is called a relative of Huseynov.

The pre-trial investigation established that on June 16, 2020, at about 15:00, six people arrived at the Three Lambs restaurant, located at the address: Odesa, st. French Boulevard, 85/87. A conflict arose between them and a group of other people, which first escalated into a fight, and then reached a massacre. At least two of the participants in the conflict were injured. Some time later, a shootout occurred in the restaurant.

Journalists learned the details of this conflict. According to the sources, the showdown was arranged by the gangs of the Georgian ’thief in law’ Mindiy Horadze, nicknamed ’Lavasogli’, and the Azerbaijani authority figure Nadir Salifov, known in criminal circles as ’Lotu Gulli’.

The fight involved athletic men from Kyiv, and the victim, who was stabbed, was an Azerbaijani citizen from Dnipro. The latter was most likely the curator of the capital’s call centres, Rashad Huseynov.

He is the owner of a BMW X7 with licence plates KA8008TV. The databases revealed that the car was owned by a resident of the city of Dnipro.

Moreover, until May 2023, these license plates were installed on the Toyota Land Cruiser. In October 2022, Huseynov violated legal requirements on this car by installing special blue and red flashing lights. Information about this is available in the court registry using the search query “Rashad Huseynov.”

From May 2023 to August 2023, Rashad Huseynov used license plates KA8008TV on a Mercedes-Benz GLS 400, in which he crashed into another car.

According to the sources who reported the details of the shooting in the Odesa restaurant, in which Rashad Huseynov took part, Emil Khalilov, a native of Azerbaijan, was also seen in the showdown. This is an interesting detail, as in 2018, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine reported that Emil Khalilov, a confidant of the ’thief in law’ nicknamed ’Gulli’, had been extradited to Azerbaijan. Photos of this process were shown, among other things.

"In Ukraine, Khalilov lived under false documents and ’wasted no time’ in supervising a criminal group specialising in drug trafficking from South America to Europe. Recently, Khalilov was granted the status of a person seeking to become a "thief in law", former Deputy Prosecutor General Yevhen Yenin wrote on his Facebook page.

In his turn, the then Deputy Head of the National Police, Vyacheslav Abroskin, added that Khalilov had given important testimony against ’thieves in law’ of Ukrainian origin.

It is not known how Emil Khalilov managed to return to Ukraine in 2020 after his extradition to Azerbaijan. However, his involvement in criminal proceedings involving Rashad Huseynov, among others, suggests that Azerbaijani authorities are trying to gain a foothold in Ukraine.

The information collected should be of interest to law enforcement agencies, who have somewhat forgotten the topic of call centers since the beginning of 2024. Meanwhile, scammers continue to swindle millions of hryvnias out of gullible people. Moreover, this process is gradually passing into the hands of criminal authorities, to which Ukrainian law enforcement officers should pay special attention.

Author:Olena Dobrodiy