Tale Heydarov
Tale Heydarov (; born 9 February 1985) is an Azerbaijani businessperson and lobbyist. He is the son of Kamaladdin Heydarov, the Azerbaijan minister for emergency situations. He founded the European Azerbaijan Society (TEAS), a lobbying group which was known for sponsoring luxurious trips for European politicians to travel to Azerbaijan and promoting the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan. It has since closed. The group was involved in the Azerbaijani laundromat scandal. Heydarov was also implicated in a 2018 investigation by the Daphne Project into companies that invested in secret across Europe through a Maltese bank. Early life. He is the  son of Kamaladdin Heydarov, the Azerbaijan minister for emergency situations. BBC News has described Kamaladdin Heydarov as among "the wealthiest and most powerful in the governing elite" in Azerbaijan. According to a 2010 leaked US diplomatic cable, Kamaladdin Heydarov accrued "massive wealth" as chairman of the Azerbaijan customs agency, “an agency that is notoriously corrupt, even by Azerbaijani standards.” He has degrees from Collingham College, London; London School of Economics, International Relations and History; and Birkbeck, University of London, Master's degree in International Security and Global Governance. Career. Tale Heydarov is Chairman of the Board of Gilan Holdings, a  conglomerate business in Azerbaijan. Heyadrov took over the company from his father who founded the company in the 1980s. The company has invested in the Azeri football clubs Gabala FC football club and Gabala Sports Club. Tale was president of Gabala FC from 2005 to 2019, and Gabala Sports Club since 2013. Tale is the founder of several companies in the publishing sector, including TEAS PRESS Publishing House and the Libraff chain of bookstores, which sells publications in Azerbaijani, English, Russian and Turkish. Heydarov has published books about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through his publishing house. His publications include "The  Armenian Question in the Caucasus: Russian Archive Documents and Publications (2011)", "the Khojaly Witness of a War Crime: Armenia in the Dock (2015)," "Karabakh History in the Context of Conflict (2015)" and "The People the World Forgot". While a student in London, Heydarov founded the London Azerbaijani Society which later developed into the European Azerbaijani Society (TEAS). It is a lobbying group which was known for sponsoring luxurious trips for European politicians to travel to Azerbaijan and promoting the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan. The group was involved in the Azerbaijani laundromat scandal. Tale is also the founder of the "Visions  of Azerbaijan" magazine, which began in 2006 but also launched as a digital TV channel in 2016. Both closed in 2018 as they went into insolvency. Personal life. He is married with one daughter and one son.