Having been imprisoned in Azerbaijani jails for nearly five years now, Mehmet Sahan has had ample time to reflect on the reasons for his downfall – at least when his fragile health allows. As Le Monde revealed in the first part of our investigation, Sahan, a 48-year-old French-Turkish dual national, ran the Azerbaijan branch of Thales, the French leader in technology and defense, for many years before his sudden dismissal. He was then sentenced by the Azerbaijani courts to 10 years in prison and a €4 million fine, notably on charges of embezzlement, in proceedings with many murky elements.

Denouncing what he called a "judicial parody," Sahan has offered his own explanation for his ordeal: He believes he may have probed a little too closely into the French arms group's potential corruption networks in the Caucasus country.

The saga began in 2014, when Sahan was appointed director of the high-tech group's Baku office. He did not work alone: In addition to a team tasked with customer relations, Thales relied on local partners when operating in foreign countries where its "expertise [was] deemed insufficient." While working with such partners is "a common practice in the industry," Thales explained, the group acknowledged that they were "considered among the third parties most exposed to the risk of corruption or influence peddling."

According to Sahan, at the time, Thales relied on an Azerbaijani advisory, VES Consultancy, and an industrial partner, Concepm. Both entities, headquartered in Baku and Luxembourg respectively, were connected by one figure: Khagani Bashirov. The Azerbaijani national, who was born in 1961 and became a French citizen in 2008, was connected to both companies as either a shareholder or director. Speaking to the Swiss website Heidi.news in 2020, he described himself as "a consultant for Thales in Azerbaijan between 2002 and 2017."