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A decade‑long ban for Guernsey adviser tied to the family of an Azerbaijani oligarch
Ginette Louise Blondel, a financial adviser based in Guernsey, was fined in March 2024 by the island’s financial services regulator for operating without the appropriate licence and failing in her duty of due diligence while performing management and administrative services on behalf of two clients deemed “high-risk.” Forbidden Stories and The Sentry can now reveal that one of these clients is the Heydarov family, a key pillar of the Azerbaijani regime.
(Credit: Mélody da Fonseca / Forbidden Stories)
- Financial adviser Ginette Louise Blondel has been banned for nearly ten years from holding several key roles in Guernsey's financial sector after working without the appropriate licence and failing to conduct proper due diligence while performing management and administrative services for companies linked to the family of an Azerbaijani oligarch. We disclose that the family in question is the Heydarov family.
- Ginette Blondel served on the boards of companies with accounts held at Pilatus Bank, a financial institution at the heart of investigations led by murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
- One of her "high-risk" clients was an uncle of Bashar al-Assad, for whom she failed to implement anti-money laundering controls according to Guernsey's financial regulator.
By Youssr Youssef (Forbidden Stories) with The Sentry
July 18th, 2025
Her work cost her life. Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was probing corruption cases that plagued her country. On October 16, 2017, she was killed in a car bomb attack.
The assassination shocked all of Europe. Among the institutions at the heart of her investigations was Pilatus Bank, a Maltese bank she suspected of facilitating money laundering for Azerbaijani elites.
To continue her work, Forbidden Stories gathered an international consortium of 45 journalists from 15 different countries. The Daphne Project exposed opaque acquisitions and investments in Europe made on behalf of the Azerbaijani Heydarov family, routed through Pilatus Bank and hidden beneath layers of legal entities. Among the investments: €2.5 million for a repurposed sanatorium in Georgia, €3.9 million for a villa in Marbella, Spain, and tens of millions of euros in three renowned French artisanal companies.
Kamaladdin Heydarov is the Minister of Emergency Situations. The Heydarovs are ‘Client No. 2’ of Ginette Blondel, who worked for their family office (Credit: Ministry of Emergency Situations, Russia).
Among the key actors in this system was Guernsey-based Ginette Louise Blondel, fined in March 2024 by Guernsey’s Financial Services Commission (GFSC) for operating without a licence. In its decision, the GFSC anonymised the names of Blondel’s clients. The entity the financial authority has labeled “Client No. 2” is reportedly a “politically exposed family from a high-risk Central Asian jurisdiction (…) [with] close ties with the ruling family of the said jurisdiction.” In terms of geographical location, Forbidden Stories and The Sentry can confirm that the country is in the South Caucasus, not Central Asia. The country in question is Azerbaijan. We also reveal the identity of the mysterious “Client No. 2”: the Heydarovs’ family office.
Multiple sources point towards the “Client 2” family office being that of the Heydarovs. A key one is corporate records of companies registered in Malta. The GFSC notice explains that Blondel met “Client 2”’s family office in late 2014 and shortly began work for them––without a license––which included providing directorships and management services to “7 non-Guernsey companies”, which grew to 12 directorships by August 2015. This matches Blondel’s corporate footprint in Malta, where she held directorships in 12 companies, the last one of which was incorporated in August 2015. All of those companies were connected to Heydarov family members and some of them directly linked to the European-held assets.
Another “breach of regulations'” included her failure to put in place measures to establish the source of funds and wealth of her “high-risk” clients. The shadow adviser is now barred from holding key financial sector positions for just under ten years and has been fined £210,000. Despite several attempts to contact her, we were unable to obtain a comment from Ginette Blondel.
Matthew Caruana Galizia, son of the murdered journalist, welcomed the news when speaking to Forbidden Stories but tempered the significance of the sanction: “Despite the size of the fine, she has still emerged with a profit from her activity.”
The Heydarovs: At the Heart of Politics and the Economy
In Azerbaijan, the Heydarovs move in the highest circles. At the head of the clan is the father, Kamaladdin, Minister of Emergency Situations under the Aliyev regime and a central figure in the country’s economy. Until 2023, his sons ran Gilan Holding, the sprawling conglomerate founded by their father. The entity spans banking, construction, tourism, and agriculture.
As early as 2013, connections between Kamaladdin Heydarov and the Aliyev family were brought to light by French courts and leaked to the press: the Lyon Court of Appeal upheld his conviction for “misuse of company assets,” including financing the lifestyle of President Aliyev’s sister.
Lawyers for the Heydarov sons told Forbidden Stories that they had “no involvement in the appointment of any company secretarial or administrative staff at any companies.” Already in 2018, during the Daphne Project’s initial release, lawyers representing them had told the Guardian, partners in the Daphne consortium: “Our clients are the beneficial owners of companies… which have entirely legitimate and lawful business.” The newspaper also noted that there was “no suggestion of wrongdoing,” but emphasized that the case raised new questions about the “lack of transparency” among Azerbaijan’s elite. We also attempted to reach out to Kamaladdin Heydarov’s ministry to give him a chance to comment on our article, but received no response.
Pop Art figurine by Leblon Delienne, a company in which the Heydarov family had previously invested. (Credit: Leblon Delienne, Facebook)
Commissioned by Maltese authorities in the wake of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s allegations, the Egrant inquiry — which focused in part on Pilatus Bank — sheds further light on the network of actors surrounding the Heydarovs, including Ginette Blondel. Her name appears alongside that of Robert John Baker, an Australian serving on the boards of companies linked to the Heydarovs and already identified by the Daphne Project. These details are corroborated by the Paradise Papers, confidential documents obtained by the ICIJ journalists’ network.
Caviar and Luxury Figurines
After Malta, the European Union began investigating Pilatus Bank. Following Daphne Caruana Galizia’s death, the institution came under scrutiny and in 2018 had its licence revoked by the European Central Bank. Despite the bank’s closure, Ginette Blondel continued her operations in Europe within the Azerbaijani elite sphere. That same year, she joined the board of Planet Caviar SA, a Geneva-based company specialized in the caviar trade, while Robert Baker was stepping down. He had himself succeeded Manouchehr Ahadpour Khanghah., an Iranian-born businessman described in a 2010 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks as a “front man” for numerous companies of the Heydarov family. Our messages to Manouchehr Ahadpour Khanghah went unanswered. Planet Caviar states that the three individuals were appointed to the board of directors by the shareholder Caspian Fish Company, a company that was at least at one point owned by Kamaladdin Heydarov. However, that name was “never mentioned to any of the current directors” of Planet Caviar, according to the deputy director, Louis Montavon. In 2021, when Caspian Fish Company’s stake was bought out, their powers were officially revoked.
The company Planet Caviar had Manouchehr Ahadpour Khanghah, Robert Baker, Ginette Blondel, and Craig Wilson as administrators (Credit: Planet Caviar / Instagram).
Alongside the Baker-Blondel duo at Planet Caviar sat Guernsey national Craig Wilson. He also served on several of the companies named in Malta’s investigation into Pilatus Bank. His name appears in documents from Leblon Delienne, one of the three high-end French artisan firms mentioned earlier, specializing in luxury figurine sculpture. Neither Craig Wilson nor Robert Baker responded to Forbidden Stories’ questions on the matter.
A Client Named Al-Assad
But Ginette Blondel and Craig Wilson did not stop at the Heydarovs. In December 2024, The Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed the identity of “Client No. 1” for whom Blondel had been fined by the GFSC: Rifaat Al-Assad, uncle of the Syrian dictator who was ousted in December last year. Rifaat Al-Assad was convicted in France in 2020 and sentenced to four years in prison for amassing a real estate empire valued at €90 million through funds embezzled from the Syrian state. As for Craig Wilson, Forbidden Stories consulted the French company registry, which links him to the Assads. He is listed as director of a company tasked with purchasing properties in Lyon’s Cité Internationale on behalf of various members of the Assad clan. According to several French media outlets, properties belonging to the Assads in that neighborhood were ordered by the French judiciary to be sold off last year.
Quai Charles de Gaulle in Lyon’s Cité Internationale, where Rifaat Al-Assad owned properties. (Credit: Fred Romero / Flickr)
Chanez Mensous, a lawyer with NGO Sherpa, which initiated the complaint against Rifaat Al-Assad, was unsurprised to see the names of such “facilitators” appear in multiple high-risk client files: “Investments by politically exposed persons represent a market around which an industry specializing in financial expertise has developed,” she told Forbidden Stories. These lawyers, accountants, financial consultants, or other banking intermediaries allow their clients to “to move, hide, and administer their ill-gotten gains.” said Oliver Windridge, Senior Advisor, UK & EU, at The Sentry. He added, “As key cogs in the kleptocratic machine, these facilitators must be the target of enhanced scrutiny and action from both the public and private sector. Target the enablers, and we can make a real dent in the finely honed craft of state theft.”
As for Daphne’s murder trial, it continues to drag on. Nearly eight years after her assassination, on Tuesday, June 10, two men were sentenced to life in prison for supplying the explosive that killed the journalist. The alleged mastermind behind the murder, Yorgen Fenech, was released on bail earlier this February 2025 while awaiting trial.
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