Elshad Abdullayev

Elshad Islam oglu Abdullayev (Azerbaijani: Elşad Abdullayev; born 25 September 1961, Kurdamir) is an Azerbaijani lawyer and former university rector who gained wide popularity in 2012 after producing and publishing hidden camera videos, raising public and international awareness of corruption in the Azerbaijani government. The controversy that arose as a result came to be known as the Gulargate scandal, after former MP Gular Ahmadova of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party, who featured in the first video.

Abdullayev was born in the town of Kurdamir in central Azerbaijan where he received secondary education. In 1979, he graduated with an honors degree in law from the Baku State University. He received a master's and later a doctorate degree in law in Moscow in 1985 and 2000 respectively. He was the dean of the constitution law department of the Baku State University since 1995 and a professor since 2004. He is married and has three children.

Abdullayev joined the New Azerbaijan Party and unsuccessfully ran as a candidate in the parliamentary election of 2005. Notably, his constituency of Binagadi II was among the five in which the voting results (according to which Abdullayev won) became void and new voting was scheduled for 2006. However, a polling station official reported violations during the campaign, namely that Elshad Abdullayev had reportedly been bribing the electorate to gain votes. A criminal case ensued and the court was presented evidence, following which Abdullayev's candidacy was annulled.

In 2012, Abdullayev claimed that he believed he had in fact won the election, but that "certain powers" did not wish to see him in the parliament, as that would enable Abdullayev to expose the actions of a "criminal gang of kidnappers" who, he alleged, were responsible for the kidnapping of his older brother, Ministry of State Security officer Mahir Abdullayev, back in 2003 and poisoning of his younger brother Eldaniz Abdullayev who undertook a personal investigation of the kidnapping.

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