Parliamentarians at the Council of Europe have expressed “great concern” at revelations in the Guardian and other media that detail how former members of the body were paid by Azerbaijan.

The revelations that former members of the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly (Pace) benefited from the oil-rich country’s international lobbying fund promise to shake up a body that is meant to set Europe’s standards for democratic probity.



After details of leaked bank records emerged, members of Pace’s legal affairs committee inserted a last-minute amendment to a report on human rights in Azerbaijan, which had already been scheduled for debate on Tuesday. The new text urges the government of the president, Ilham Aliyev, to investigate the Laundromat schemes without delay.



“The assembly notes with great concern reports linking the Azerbaijani government to a large money-laundering scheme,” states the text, which was passed after sharp debates among deputies meeting in Paris on Tuesday. “The assembly urges the Azerbaijani authorities to start an independent and impartial inquiry into these allegations without delay and, furthermore, cooperate fully with competent international authorities and bodies on this issue.”



In an unprecedented move, a group of Pace deputies plan to issue a dissenting opinion because they think the original report – drafted by a Belgian MP, Alain Destexhe – skims over the problem of deep-seated corruption in the oil-rich country.



The details of the payments came as an independent panel began confidential hearings into alleged corruption at Pace in Strasbourg, one of the world’s oldest human rights bodies.

The investigation into unethical practices was set up in July after Italian prosecutors accused Luca Volontè, an Italian former chair of the centre-right group in Pace, of accepting millions of euros in cash from Azerbaijan in exchange for supporting its government, which has been heavily criticised for subverting elections and jailing journalists and opponents.



Azerbaijan, a member of the Council of Europe since 2001, has been accused of “caviar diplomacy”, using cash and gifts to buy influence – charges first detailed by the European Stability Initiative thinktank in 2012. The council notably voted down a critical report on Azerbaijan’s political prisoners in 2013.



UK at centre of secret $3bn Azerbaijani money laundering and lobbying scheme Read more

Gerald Knaus, the ESI’s director, said it had taken years for the Volontè case to generate a reaction. “The Pace code of conduct is more lax than that of Fifa,” he told Le Monde, one of the team of newspapers that collaborated on the latest revelations about Azerbaijani money.



Bank documents show Azerbaijan funnelled about $2.9bn (£2.2bn) out of the country via a network of secret British companies to pay supporters, lobbyists and politicians in Europe, buy luxury goods and services, and launder money for the Azerbaijani elite.

Pieter Omtzigt, a Dutch centre-right MP who led calls for Pace to set up an investigation earlier this year, said the body was finally doing “serious and credible” work to clean up its act. But he said the Volontè case revealed a “systemic” problem within Pace, which was established after the second world war to safeguard democracy and human rights.



“It clearly points to deficiencies within the whole assembly,” he told the Guardian. “In any normal parliament, if a foreign court decides that you have paid a member of parliament and that [person] is being investigated for corruption, some kind of procedure is staring you in the face.”



Why is Azerbaijan laundering money through the UK? Azerbaijan was one of 15 states to emerge from the Soviet breakup in 1991. While some embraced democracy ​, ​ Azerbaijan succumbed to dynasty politics, ruled by Soviet-era leader Heydar Aliyev and, from 2003, his son Ilham. A well-connected elite shares in the spoils of an oil-rich economy which boomed in the 2000s, while opponents have been locked up and the media muzzled. Bank files now show the elites have siphoned billions out of the country, via lightly-regulated British-incorporated vehicles, to reward lobbyists, buy luxury items and launder cash into the European economy.

Omtzigt said the parliamentary assembly had weak compliance in declaring gifts and hospitality, with only two items recorded in the gift register in 15 years.



The president of Pace, Pedro Agramunt, initially resisted calls to set up an inquiry, but lost that battle after his authority was weakened over an unrelated scandal.



The investigation, by a panel of three independent experts, will also look at “hidden practices that favour corruption”.



Andres Herkel, an MP from Estonia – through which the Azerbaijani cash was routed – said Pace’s credibility had been damaged by the allegations. “Personally I never witnessed bribery in [the] strict and narrow sense. But I witnessed many strange interventions, opinions, voting,” said Herkel, who was the body’s rapporteur on Azerbaijan from 2004-10.

“Many people were manipulated and now they start to understand what happened with their participation,” he said. “I think the Azeri lobby was rather unique in having so many different contacts and capacity to mobilise their ‘political friends’.”

The investigation comes at a difficult time for Pace. Agramunt is expected to be voted out of the presidency in October, but continues to fight for his post. He says the case against him is “an entirely bizarre case and a regrettable spectacle”.



He was criticised for his slow response to the corruption allegations, but his position only came under threat after it emerged he had met the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, on a Russian government trip, days before a deadly chemical attack on civilians in Idlib.

Tiny Kox, head of the Unified European Left Group, a socialist delegation at the parliament, insisted Agramunt’s future would not hamper the investigation.

“The vast majority of this assembly has lost confidence in the president; that is the problem of the assembly and the problem of the president and that will come to an end in the next … session in October,” Kox said.

Investigators needed time to do their work, he said. “We now have the tools to find out what really has happened.”



The assembly published a report on Tuesday detailing concerns about the “increasing number of allegations of violations of certain human rights and fundamental freedoms” in Azerbaijan. The report also raises concerns about allegations of executive control of the judiciary in the country.



The report, drafted by Destexhe, draws milder conclusions than similar bodies. While the Pace report notes that “reform of the judiciary is a work in progress”, the council’s human rights commissioner states that arrests are used to “silence and punish” opponents of the regime. A 2016 US state department report strikes a more robust tone, describing a “crackdown on civil society”.

Destexhe’s call to avoid criticising the Azerbaijani authorities “harshly and publicly” is likely to disappoint critics, who argue that some international observers have been weak in calling out human rights abuses.

Volontè acknowledges receiving money from Azerbaijan but insists it was for his foundation, and has vowed to fight the legal case against him.

• This article was amended on 5 September 2017 to include the group that Tiny Kox leads.