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Sanctionable Misconduct in the Procurement Legislation of Azerbaijan

Teymour Aliyev

DOI https://doi.org/10.21552/epppl/2019/1/8

Keywords: Sanctionable Misconduct, Sanctions, Exclusion, Debarment, World Bank Group, Procurement legislation


The Republic of Azerbaijan, as a young member of the Council of Europe, which ratified and implemented to its legislation the provisions of numerous conventions against corruption as well as other international agreements on combating transnational crimes, money laundering and other corruption-related misconduct, and by being a developing country and benefiting from loans and other funds provided by the World Bank Group (WBG), should substantially upgrade its anti-corruption legislation and especially in the procurement area in order to keep pace with fast changing international standards. Whilst the concept of corruption may be more or less universal both in the national legislation and international normative documents, the notions of fraud and other ‘corruption-related’ misbehaviour in laws of Azerbaijan should be clearly defined and advanced to match the definitions used by the WBG and other multilateral development banks. And when they are legibly defined, the grounds for the exclusion and debarment of bidders and contractors committing such misconduct and sanctions should be broadened and differentiated with an eye to ensure fairness of the procurement process and harmonization with regulations applied internationally. In this work the terms of corruption, forgery, fraud and coercion according to the national legislation of Azerbaijan and the WBG standards have been analysed and compared. Further, in order to demonstrate legal shortages and loopholes at the national level, the legal grounds for the exclusion and debarment of bidders committing corruption-related acts at procurement procedures in Azerbaijan and its champion company SOCAR, and the type of applicable sanctions, with comparison to the provisions of the suspension and debarment standards employed by the WBG, have been described. Finally, the author has tried to offer proposals on the elimination of regulatory gaps for the purpose of ensuring the effectiveness and fairness of procurement-related exclusion and debarment process in Azerbaijan.
Keywords: Corruption-related Misconduct; Sanctions; Exclusion; Debarment; World Bank Group; Procurement legislation.

Teymour Aliyev works at SOCAR (State oil company of the Azerbaijan Republic) since 2010, dealing with ethics, compliance and anti-corruption issues. He received his LLB and LLM degrees from Baku State University, the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2003 and 2006 respectively, and holds an LLM in oil and gas law obtained from the University of Aberdeen, the UK in 2013. He engaged extensively in the application of criminal legislation and laws on the recovery of assets from 2005 till 2009. Since 2018, he is a member of the Azerbaijan Bar Association.

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