Britain trained KGB veteran’s police force after major oil deal

The British government provided ‘counter-terrorism’ training to officers in Azerbaijan’s brutal successor to the KGB, newly declassified files reveal.

Organisation for the training began in October 1994, just days after a BP-led consortium won a major contract to extract Azerbaijan’s oil – sometimes dubbed ‘the deal of the century’.

The training came despite an arms embargo against Azerbaijan and neighbouring Armenia due to the war over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, in which the UK claimed neutrality

And it occurred less than a year after Heydar Aliyev – the former KGB chief in Azerbaijan – had overthrown the democratically elected president of the country in a coup.

Aliyev had launched a state of emergency, triggering a crackdown on free speech with raids on newspaper and opposition party offices, conducted by the same department that was benefiting from UK policing expertise.

London’s metropolitan police service, which delivered the training, did not respond to a request for comment.

The files, released under the ‘30 year rule,’ also reveal new details of the close relationship between officials in John Major’s administration and BP staff.

They co-ordinated a visit to the UK by President Aliyev and a return trip from the then energy minister, Tim Eggar.

BP put pressure on the UK government to offer Azerbaijan diplomatic support at the UN over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in exchange for signing the deal with the company.

Eggar, who stood down as an MP in 1997, went on to a lucrative career in the oil industry, and was the chair of the Oil and Gas authority – the UK’s fossil fuel regulator – from 2019-2024.

A new petro-state

When Azerbaijan won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, there were two major issues which concerned Western powers.

First, its plentiful oil supplies. The Azeri government wanted major capital investment, and was looking for a Western partner.

It was one of the most lucrative deals to be done in the collapsing Soviet Union and the British government was very keen that BP win it.

Before Britain opened its embassy in the country, its ambassador and his team operated from the BP office in its capital Baku.

In 1992, the recently ousted Margaret Thatcher personally delivered cheques worth $30m from BP to Azerbaijan, which seems to have secured the company primary position in the oil negotiations.

A lurid report in the Mail on Sunday (since taken down) even alleged BP spent millions on alcohol-fueled parties and sex workers to encourage Azeri officials to back their offer. BP has said “there are some facts in [the] account that are accurate, but we don’t recognise most of it. We regard it as fantasy.”

Papers from the Turkish intelligence service, leaked in 2000, suggest that BP and MI6 discussed supplying weapons for the 1993 coup in which the first democratically elected president of Azerbaijan was overthrown by Aliyev, because the ex-KGB chief was more open to dealing with the company.

While BP conceded it did discuss providing arms for the coup, it denies going ahead with the plan.

A second consideration for Western officials was the territorial dispute over the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region, which sits between the country and (also newly independent) Armenia.

The overwhelming majority of people there identify as and speak Armenian, but it had (for reasons historians still debate) been placed under Azerbaijani administration first by the British when they occupied the area at the end of WWI, and then again by the Soviets after both countries were subsumed into the USSR in 1920.

Longstanding demands among the people of Karabakh to be reunited with Armenia had started to gain momentum in 1988, when a referendum to join Armenia passed overwhelmingly (followed, later, by growing support for independence). This tension erupted into full scale fighting in 1992.

An Azerbaijan policeman at a road block on the route to Nagorno-Karabakh, April 1993. (Photo: Chuck Nacke / Alamy)

‘Heavily involved’

Five recently released files from 1994 – the year Azerbaijan finally signed the BP deal – provide new information about how closely the government worked with BP to get the deal.

The first two files concern an official visit by Aliyev to London in February 1994 and a return visit by the energy minister Tim Eggar that May. The files show the extraordinary extent to which Foreign Office decisions were subsumed by the interests of the oil giant.

One cable between officials reassures its reader that BP was “heavily involved in the programme” for Aliyev’s visit, and were expected to be “closely involved in any entertainment hosted by the parliamentary group [of MPs meeting Aliyev].”

Details of the visits, up to and including their dates, were co-ordinated with BP in order to try to ensure maximum effect for the company.

One major concern facing BP at the time was that the oil fields they wanted to pump were located towards the middle of the Caspian Sea, whose borders had yet to be agreed – clearly a fraught international issue for the five coastal states.

A briefing paper written before Eggar’s visit says that “in the event of a dispute, BP may run the risk that Azerbaijani jurisdiction over the fields might not be upheld,” meaning that “BP could stand to lose some of their investment”.

The memo concludes that British commentary on the matter should be “carefully co-ordinated” with BP. The Caspian’s sea borders weren’t agreed until 2018, and tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan continue.

‘Much for Britain to gain commercially’

The files are also explicit that civil servants believed Aliyev was using the oil deal as leverage to try and secure British support for Azerbaijan’s position on Nagorno-Karabakh.

By then, the disputed region was under the control of its local population and their Armenian allies after a major defeat for Azerbaijan in autumn 1993, shortly after Aliyev took power.

As one memo put it, “political support over Nagorno-Karabach is top of the Azeri agenda. There are signs that Aliyev is now ready to support an oil deal with a BP led consortium. There is thereby much for Britain to gain commercially.”

Throughout the papers, Foreign Office officials are clear that they intend to maintain neutrality on Nagorno-Karabakh – indeed, Britain had hosted Armenia’s president only weeks before Aliyev’s visit.

As one memo says, “We have been trying hard to discourage Azerbaijanis from making linkages between the conclusion of the BP deal and a political settlement in Nagorno-Karabach. Such linkages would be most unlikely to benefit BP.”

In one letter from BP’s chief lobbyist to a senior civil servant reflecting on Aliyev’s visit and discussing further leverage which can be used to encourage Azerbaijan to accept BP’s offer, the company suggests offering “further help in the CSCE and UN” – on condition that the deal is signed.”

In an internal memo about the BP note, another civil servant responds that he is “astonished by [BP’s] suggestion that UK support for the peace process in Nagorno-Karabakh be made dependent on progress in the oil negotiations. We have been round this course many times before.”

National security

Despite these clear denials, the position the Foreign Office claimed as ‘neutrality’ is seen by many experts as ultimately one which supports the Azerbaijani line – accepting Baku’s sovereignty over the region, while supporting autonomy and cultural rights for Armenians who live there.

And it seems that, in reality, British support for Azerbaijan went significantly further than the stated position.

The final of the five files reveals that, almost immediately after the Azerbaijanis had signed their deal with the BP-led consortium in September 1994, two colonels from Azerbaijan’s Ministry of National Security were sent – seemingly at the Foreign Office’s expense – on a metropolitan police course described variously as “bomb detection” and “counterterrorism”.

The primary threat from bombs, or ‘terrorists’ in Azerbaijan at the time came from Armenians seeking self-determination for Nagorno-Karabakh, the dispute in which Britain was officially neutral.

The file then goes on to show a menu of other potential courses that Azerbaijani officers could be offered. Whether these were taken up isn’t recorded, as the exchange hits the end of 2024, and the 30 year transparency rule runs out – for now.

‘Troubling entanglement’

Commenting on the papers, Tatev Hovhannisyan, an Armenian journalist, said, “The 1994 files suggest that Britain’s claim of neutrality in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was, at best, inconsistent.

“While officially positioning itself as impartial, the UK appeared to prioritise strategic and energy interests over a genuinely balanced approach to the conflict by supporting Azerbaijan’s position and providing security training shortly after the BP oil deal.

“This reflects a broader pattern in which geopolitical and commercial interests have often outweighed concern for justice, stability and the rights of the predominantly ethnic Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Decisions made behind closed doors contributed to the power imbalances that shaped the post-ceasefire landscape.

“The revelation that BP reportedly pressured the UK Foreign Office to support Azerbaijan at the UN raises concerns about the extent to which corporate interests influenced foreign policy in the South Caucasus. Even if the request was ultimately declined, its very existence highlights a troubling entanglement of business and diplomacy,” she added.

Responding to the revelation that Britain trained Azeri national security officers after the BP deal was signed, James Marriott, co-author of The Oil Road – a book about oil in the Caucuses – said:

“When things are insecure, it costs a lot more to raise capital: BP was determined to try and create stability in Azerbaijan – not for the benefit of the general population but for their own benefit, and they had put all of their chips on Aliyev.

“We already knew that 90% of the reason the British state was interested in the post-Soviet caucuses was BP – BP can’t carry out its work in Azerbaijan without the backing of the British state and the British state can’t extend its influence into the Caucuses without BP.

“What these new papers show is that the British state was willing to go as far as training officers who were part of a repressive state apparatus – arguably helping one side in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute despite professed neutrality – in order to help BP get its way.

“When you consider what’s happened since – with Azerbaijan re-invading Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, the ongoing tension in the region, and wider geo-politics at the moment, there’s a high chance that this isn’t just mopping up old business, it’s the overture to future business”.