Boy, 12, 'buys £30m worth of luxury Dubai property'

The 12-year-old son of the Azerbaijan president has gone on a multi-million pound property spending spree, buying up a series of luxury Dubai waterfront mansions.

Heydar Aliyev, the son of Ilham Aliyev, the oil-rich country’s president, allegedly spent almost £30 million (US$44 million) on nine waterfront mansions in the southern Gulf emirate earlier this year, reports said.

The boy, who was 11 at the time, made the purchase in the Palm Jumeirah development over two weeks. Heydar’s name and his date of birth appeared on Dubai Land Department records.



The details listed on the property records were the same as those of the son of the former Soviet Republic’s president, whose annual salary is about £150,000 ($228,000). The purchases are about the equivalent to 10,000 years' worth of salary for the average citizen of the country.

Industry sources with knowledge of the transactions said the purchases were made by a buyer representing Azerbaijan's ruling family, with the properties paid for “upfront”.

It remains unclear whether the boy was given the property as a gift or how he could have bought into the development, after officials in Baku, the country’s capital, refused to comment on the claims. "I have no comment on anything. I am stopping this talk. Goodbye," Azer Gasimov, the president's spokesman said.