# Nadir Salifov

Nadir Nariman oglu Salifov (Azerbaijani: Nadir Nəriman oğlu Səlifov; 28 August 1972 – 19 August 2020), nicknamed Heart (Guli in Georgian), was a top Azerbaijan crime boss, notorious gangster and convicted criminal believed to be one of the richest of the criminal fraternity.

## Early life

Salifov was born in Dmanisi, Georgian SSR to an Azerbaijani family. Salifov's family was poor, and Salifov was trained in thievery by a retired thief in law. Salifov started stealing when he about 15 years old. Two of Salifov's brothers also became criminals, and one of them, Namik, received a criminal "title".

## Criminal activity
### Early activities and imprisonment

His first documented run-in with the law was in Baku, Azerbaijan during 1995 on false charges according to Salifov. By law, Azerbaijani authorities can hold a suspect for up to 72 hours. Salifov was detained for eight months. He claims he was held under barbaric conditions: a starvation diet barely adequate for subsistence; no fresh water; no facilities for washing, shaving or cutting his hair or nails; and no medical care. This apparently resulted in his weight dropping from 210 lb (95 kg) to a mere 138 lb (63 kg).
On 19 July 1996, at age 24, he was convicted of the murder of two rival gang members, despite his protestations of innocence. At the time of his arrest, he was in possession of a Stechkin APS machine pistol, a weapon that at that time only the head of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Internal Affairs, the MVD, was thought to possess. Salifov was given the death penalty but the presiding judge commuted the sentence to 15 years' imprisonment. Ten of those 15 years were spent in solitary confinement.
At the time of his arrest he was carrying a passport of the former USSR issued in Georgia. Salifov did not apply for Azerbaijani citizenship during the years he spent in prison.
While in prison Salifov had an additional 16 years added to his original 15-year sentence, as a result of assault charges filed by a female visitor. She, however, later withdrew her story and claimed to have made the original allegations under duress. At the same time, Salifov was informed that his 10 years in solitary would not count towards his release date. He used contacts and ingenuity to maintain various profitable criminal enterprises during his incarceration. He also possessed a cell phone, having four different numbers with which he kept contact with criminal associates who had been released and were at large. By these means he conducted an extortion racket against various Azerbaijani businesses and individuals. Salifov is also believed, with the assistance of his brother and through bribing prison authorities, to have arranged for at least eight women to be taken in to the prison for sexual purposes. In some cases this was allegedly against the women's will and resulted in rape. He is also believed to have made similar arrangements for certain fellow prisoners. Some of the women subsequently made allegations of rape and coercion, but these never reached court.
In 2010, while Salifov was still in prison, there was a turf war known as The Dill War between associates of Nadir Salifov and those of Rovshan Janiyev (known as Rovshan Lenkoransky) over acquiring the green grocers markets in Moscow and on its Ring Road, which had previously been operated by convicted criminal Bakic Aliyev. Four men with criminal histories were killed during this conflict. In 2014 there was more struggling for the lucrative markets which led to a "Wild Western-style" gunfight during a meeting of the competing clans in the Absheron cafe in Moscow in which one man was killed with several suffering gunshot wounds.

### After prison release activities

Salifov controlled criminal networks in the Czech Republic and Poland. He knew representatives of the police of the European Union, the Czech Republic, and Poland.
He was marked as a potential replacement for Rovshan Lenkoransky, the convicted criminal murdered the previous year. This tied in with reports from early 2017 that Janiyev's underboss Agayar Agayev (aka Sedoy, Russian for "grey-haired"), who used to control the Yekaterinburg market, was now representing Salifov's interests. This appeared to be the case despite the fact that there was no love lost between Salifov and Rovshan Lenkoransky.
In December 2017 Russian police were attempting to defuse a tense situation in which Chechen criminals under Aziz Batukaev had been trying to take control of the green grocer markets held by Salifov's group. Nadir Salifov had laid claims to the Food City market in Moscow controlled by Rovshan Lenkoransky's proxies. According to police, the war for the largest wholesale food market in the capital was just getting going.
In March 2018, an Azeri claiming to be an exiled journalist, Rahim Namazov, was ambushed in the suburbs of Toulouse, France. Namazov was seriously wounded in the attack and his wife died of her injuries. Unsubstantiated claims suggest that this attack may have been ordered by Salifov as payback for previous insults and offenses.
In 2020, a group of four of Salifov's gang members were arrested in Odesa by the Security Service of Ukraine for running a kidnapping racket. The gang would reach out to their victims or their victim's friends on social media, sometimes using women as bait, and would kidnap their victims and rob their residences. The gang usually demanded a ransom of one million dollars for the release of their hostages. Most of their victims were wealthy businessmen. The gang threatened physical violence for non-payment of the ransom.

## Death

Salifov was shot dead on 19 August 2020 at a restaurant in Antalya by his bodyguard, nicknamed "Khan". Khan, who was later identified as 25-year-old Khagan Zeynalov, entered Salifov's room and shot him with a pistol twice; the fatal bullet hit the back of Salifov's head. Salifov was rushed to hospital by his other bodyguards, but he died of injuries in the ambulance. He may have been killed as "revenge for assaulting other Azeri gangsters".
Zeynalov attempted to escape towards the city of Denizli, but was arrested by Turkish police along with his accomplice Amir Gamidli, who acted as Zeynalov's getaway driver. Zeynalov and Gamidli were sentenced to life imprisonment in Turkey.