Investigation: Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva listed among qualifying shareholders of Istanbul-based PASHA Yatırım Bankası

A new investigation titled “One Country, Two Families” presents documents on the business ties of the families of Ilham Aliyev and Emergency Situations Minister Kamaladdin Heydarov, stretching from Türkiye to the United Kingdom and from Dubai to Baku. The investigation is based on official financial statements, company registers, corporate documents and earlier journalistic investigations.

The 2025 report of Istanbul-based PASHA Yatırım Bankası, prepared by KPMG, lists Ilham Aliyev's daughters Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva as persons holding qualifying interests in the bank. According to data as of December 31, 2025, each of them is listed with a 36.41% qualifying interest. According to the report, PASHA Holding owned 71.75% of the bank's shares and PASHA Bank OJSC 28.21%, while the holding's ownership structure showed two companies, Bless and Reveri, each with a 37.50% stake. According to a disclosure published on Türkiye's Public Disclosure Platform (KAP) on September 28, 2026, PASHA Holding's 358,748,764 shares in the bank were transferred to PASHA Financial Holding, which is wholly owned by the holding.

According to the documents, the share of PASHA Bank, Kapital Bank, Xalq Bank and Bank Avrasiya – fully or partly owned by the Aliyev family – in the assets of the country's banking sector rose from 16% in 2015 to 43% at the end of 2022. According to an official statement released by PASHA Holding on January 13, 2023, the company owns 50% of the Mandarin Oriental Bodrum hotel in Türkiye's Bodrum region; the purchase price was not given in the statement.

In 2021, within the Pandora Papers project, 84 offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and linked to the Aliyev family and its close circle were identified; the London property portfolio connected to these companies at one point reached a value of £429 million. According to an investigation published in December 2024, five of six flats in London's Hyde Park area were linked to Leyla Aliyeva and one to Arzu Aliyeva, while the ultimate beneficial owners of ten further properties bought for $160 million were not identified. According to the UK's Companies House register, Leyla Aliyeva is registered as a person with significant control in Knightsbridge Consultancy and Bridgewater International Investments, and Arzu Aliyeva in Harrow Ventures.

Gilan Holding, linked to Kamaladdin Heydarov's family, was later renamed Khazri Solutions, and its charter capital was reduced in 2022 from 98.5 million manats to 100 manats. In 2013, 51% of the holding belonged to Dubai-registered Sahra FZCO and 49% to Shams al Sahra FZCO; documents from March 2023 link the first company to Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva and the second to Kamaladdin Heydarov's son Tale Heydarov. According to a notice published by the Ministry of Economy on February 13, 2026, AECOM Exp Russia Limited filed a bankruptcy petition against Khazri Solutions, which is in liquidation; the final outcome of the case was not established in the investigation.

The investigation also notes that the readiness-for-operation approval for Tale Heydarov's three-storey building in Goygol district was issued on August 26, 2026 by the Ministry of Emergency Situations headed by his father. The available documents do not show that Kamaladdin Heydarov personally signed the approval.

No new requests were sent to the persons and companies named as part of the investigation. In an interview in October 2021, Ilham Aliyev said he had been in business before being elected president and had transferred his companies to his children, and called what was written in the Pandora Papers investigation largely exaggerated information.