The week of October 10-14 saw Azerbaijan not voting in the UN General Assembly, Minister of Culture admits corruption schemes and the Azerbaijani team Qarabag played in the UEFA League.
War in Ukraine: Azerbaijan did not vote in the UN General Assembly condemning annexed territories
On October 12, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring illegal the annexation of four provinces of Ukraine by Russia. Although 143 countries supported the resolution, Russia, Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Nicaragua opposed it. Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan and seven other countries did not participate in the voting.
Civil society representative Anar Mammadli explains to Meydan TV that, although the common country’s position in relation to Russia is neutrality, Azerbaijan’s national interests and foreign policy are based on recognizing the territorial integrity of other countries. Therefore, refraining from voting this time was considered negative and contradictory.
Although Meydan TV tried to contact the Press Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the last vote, it was not possible to get a statement.
Minister of Culture: “There are cases of corruption in music schools”
A conference on “Reform processes in art schools: achievements and goals” was held at the International Mugham Center. Minister of Culture Anar Karimov, directors and representatives of children’s music and art schools across the country took part in the meeting.
In his statement to journalists before the meeting, the minister said that inspections have been carried out in cultural institutions in the regions for more than a year. He said that as a result of inspections, serious corruption violations in music schools were revealed. Those are most originated from a lack of control system which leads to, for instance, the payment to fictitious employees. Because of that, the minister affirmed that 210 children’s music and art schools have installed special devices that read fingerprints in order to monitor the attendance of teachers and students.
It was reported that criminal cases were initiated against the heads of the institutions of the Ministry of Culture located in different regions. As a result, eight criminal cases were initiated on the managers of cultural institutions regarding crimes of fraud, embezzlement and waste, bribery, abuse of power and forgery.
Qarabag played in the European League this week
On October 13, Qarabag football team played in the group phase of the UEFA Europa League.
The champion of Azerbaijan hosted the Greek team Olympiakos at the Republic Stadium named after Tofig Bahramov. A week ago, in the game held in Greece, Gurban Gurbanov’s team defeated the representative of Greece with a big score (3:0).
No goals were scored in the game in Baku. After the game, Qarabag increased the number of points in the group to 7 and kept its place in the second tier. The leader of the group is Germany’s Freiburg with 12 points.