Picasso Holdings Limited

Picasso Holdings Limited is a company registered in the UAE.[341] In 2015, Leyla Aliyeva was the beneficial owner.[341]

Picasso Holdings is named in financial investigators’ reports as having featured in an interconnected network of shell companies that held bank accounts at Pilatus Bank in Malta. The company paid funds into a Dubai bank account held by Palma Management Consulting DMCC, an anonymous shell company that investigators said “might have been used as a payment hub” benefitting senior Azerbaijani political figures.[11] [665] Between 2015 and 2017, Picasso Holdings paid Palma Management Consulting 129,399 GBP ($198.805) and 1.3 million AED ($353.929).[11] [506] [341]

In 2015, Picasso Holdings received almost 13 million AED ($3.8 million) in its Pilatus Bank account from MIRK General Trading, a Dubai company owned by Behzad Ahadpour Khanghah, an Iranian national and business associate of Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva.[341] [425] [108] [5]

Accounts at Pilatus Bank belonging to Picasso Holdings and Davinci Holdings Limited received over 2 million GBP ($2.8 million) from NH Investments for the sale of a property.[341] Between 2015 and 2017, they also received total of 163 million AED ($44.5 million) from a bank account at Emirates NBD in Dubai belonging to a UAE company called Sofitel Dubai The Palm Resort & Spa FZCO,[341] [513] [433] [432] [1396] [1397] which, as of 2013, was ultimately and equally owned by Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva and Tale and Nijat Heydarov.[341] Emirates NBD told The Sentry: “The bank is unable to provide any comment to confirm or deny any client relationships due to our internal policies and our regulatory obligations.”[1400]