Robert John Baker is a chartered accountant from Australia and a former KPMG employee.[584] [11]
He was the business partner of Thamer Aidi,[11] a London-based investment manager.[15] Baker and Aidi ran Paddington Partners Ltd in Guernsey.[15] In 2012, they signed a letter of engagement to handle all the business interests of the family of Kamaladdin Heydarov, Azerbaijan’s minister of emergency situations.[11] Baker and Aidi are shareholders of Palma Management Consulting DMCC,[9] [11] [586] a Dubai company that financial investigators suspected had been used as a “payment hub” for senior Azerbaijani political figures.[11] Investigators found that, between December 2015 and January 2016, Palma received a total of $876,580 from an account at Malta’s Pilatus Bank held by Sahra FZCO,[586] [11] a company owned by Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva.[5]
Baker, along with Aidi’s wife, Farnoush Farsiar, appeared “to play a significant role” in managing the finances of Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva, according to financial investigators.[11] The pair feature extensively in the records of Pilatus Bank, which was shuttered in 2018 over systemic failures to comply with anti-money laundering regulations.[587] According to investigators who trawled through the bank’s records, Baker and Farsiar signed payment instructions on behalf of Sahra FZCO and were authorized signatories on accounts belonging to UAE registered companies Davinci Holdings Limited, owned by Arzu Aliyeva, and Picasso Holdings Limited, owned by Leyla Aliyeva.[11] [341]
Baker has been a director of several companies in the UK, including Paddington Capital Limited and Palex Properties Limited.[588] [589] Both were incorporated in the 2010s and dissolved a few years later.
Robert John Baker did not respond to The Sentry’s request for comment.
