Baku / Moscow, September 26, 2025
By Azerbaijan.US Editorial Board
Another Azerbaijani businessman is being dragged through Russian courts, another strategic asset stripped under the thin cover of “fraud charges.”
This time the target is Shahlar Novruzov, owner of the Tuapse Commercial Sea Port, the “Old Baku” restaurant in Krasnodar, and the company Dar Frut.
He has been jailed, accused of trying to seize nearly a billion rubles’ worth of assets. The number is designed for shock value, not proof.
The pattern could not be clearer. Azerbaijani entrepreneurs build, invest, and expand across Russia – only to see their achievements criminalized and their assets handed over to “safer” Russian hands.
The Tuapse port, a strategic Black Sea facility, is simply the latest trophy in Moscow’s quiet campaign of dispossession.
The case reveals the double standard. Russian insiders like Oleg Basin, celebrated for Olympic construction projects, are protected. The Azerbaijani partner becomes the fall guy, paraded as a fraudster.
His real crime is not financial misconduct. His only crime is being Azerbaijani in today’s Russia.
This is not justice. It is selective persecution, wrapped in legal paperwork. It is Moscow’s enduring imperial reflex: to remind Azerbaijanis that in Russia, their success is tolerated only until the Kremlin decides to take it away.
The Tuapse case is not just about one man. It is about a message sent to an entire community. It is about the systematic humiliation of those whose only fault is their national origin.
And it is about the uncomfortable truth that no property, no business, no achievement of an Azerbaijani in Russia is safe.
