Moscow police arrest Azerbaijani crime boss Vagif Suleymanov amid rising diplomatic tensions between Moscow and Baku
On Thursday, Moscow police arrested Azerbaijani organized crime figure Vagif Suleymanov, also known as Vagif Bakinsky and the Diplomat, for violating Russian residency regulations. According to the newspaper Kommersant, Suleymanov is now being held at a temporary detention center for foreign citizens and awaits deportation to Azerbaijan.
The Telegram channels VChK-OGPU and 112, which have close ties to Russian law enforcement sources, published arrest footage showing SWAT officers pinning a man face-down to the ground. In the video, the man on the ground identifies himself as Suleymanov to someone off-camera. “Are you a crime boss? A thief? Are you a thief[-in-law]?” voices ask him. “I don’t respond to such questions," Suleymanov says.
The Telegram channel Baza, which also has close ties with police, reported that officers in Orenburg arrested “another Azerbaijani crime figure named Zaur.” According to the Telegram channel 112, Zaur will face criminal prosecution in Russia.
Vagif Suleymanov has been linked to various business projects in Moscow, including billionaire God Nisanov's Food City. Suleymanov was born in 1965 in Tbilisi and lived in Baku before moving to Russia in the 1990s. According to the website Prime Crime, Suleymanov had been repeatedly tried on charges of theft and drug possession. He was considered close to the thief-in-law Aslan Usoyan (Ded Khasan), who was killed in 2013.
It is unclear whether Suleymanov’s arrest is connected to recent police raids on other Azerbaijani nationals in Yekaterinburg. On June 27, police arrested dozens of people in connection with a murder investigation; two of those detained — brothers Huseyn and Ziyaddin Safarov — died in custody. The men’s bodies reportedly showed signs of beatings and torture. In response to the mass arrests and the brothers’ deaths, Azerbaijani police arrested and beat more than 10 Russians in Baku, charging them with organized crime, smuggling drugs from Iran, and committing cybercrimes.
