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Timeline
August 1991 – Azerbaijan declares independence from the Soviet Union. Ayaz Mutalibov, the former first secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party, becomes president.
March 1992 – President Mutalibov resigns following the escalation of hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which formally declares independence from Azerbaijan in December. The subsequent two-year war results in more than 30,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees.
June 1992 – Abulfaz Elchibey, leader of the opposition Popular Front Party (PFP), is elected president. The worsening Nagorno-Karabakh situation, poor economic management and widespread corruption leads to an armed insurrection in Ganja, Azerbaijan's second-largest city, in June 1993. President Elchibey is deposed by a national referendum two months later, and the National Council confers presidential powers upon its new speaker, Heydar Aliyev.
October 1993 – Aliyev is elected president with over 98 percent of the vote. He names Surat Husseinov prime minister.
May 1994 – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh sign a cease-fire agreement brokered by Russia. Despite the agreement, sporadic violence will continue for years.
October 1994 – Prime Minister Husseinov is accused of plotting a coup supported by Russia, where he flees. Russia extradites Husseinov in March 1997 to Azerbaijan, where he is later sentenced to life imprisonment.
November 1995 – Azerbaijan's first members of parliament are elected.
February 1998 – President Aliyev fires his foreign minister, Hasan Hasanov, who is linked to a building project scandal.
August 1998 – The government lifts pre-publication censorship. However, politically-motivated defamation suits and the beating and detention of journalists continue.
November 1998 – President Aliyev fires Gyulabbas Gakhramanov, head of the committee for refugees, for involvement in a scandal over embezzlement of foreign aid. He also reprimands other senior officials for their inability to control corruption.
September 2001 – Czech-born financier Viktor Kozeny tells the Wall Street Journal he spent 381 billion manat (US$83 million) bribing high-ranking Azeri officials to give a U.S. client the contract for privatizing the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR).
January 2003 – The Ministry of Taxes begins investigating corruption in SOCAR, resulting in the arrest of two officials. The investigation reveals involvement of hundreds of private companies in the corruption scheme, but effects no real changes in SOCAR's accountability or transparency.
August 2003 – Ailing President Aliyev appoints his son Ilham prime minister, putting him in line to succeed his father. The senior Aliyev dies in December.
October 2003 – Ilham Aliyev is elected president in a landslide victory.
January 2004 – Parliament adopts a new anti-corruption law that defines corruption and outlines public officials' responsibility to fight it but does not require them to disclose their assets or income. President Aliyev issues a decree in March delaying implementation of the law until January 2005 and establishing an anti-corruption agency under the prosecutor-general.
April 2004 – The Commission for the Fight Against Corruption is constituted at the first meeting of the civil service executive board. The commission comprises members from all three branches of government but lacks civil society and media representatives.
December 2004 – Several high-ranking military officers are arrested on corruption charges and dozens more demoted. The officers are accused of participating in a scam involving the construction of canteens and other military facilities.
March 2005 – Elmar Huseinov, editor of the opposition magazine Monitor and outspoken critic of the government, is killed in front of his Baku apartment building.
October 2005 – Former economic development minister Farhad Aliyev is dismissed from his post and charged with embezzlement and plotting a coup against the government.
November 2005 – The ruling New Azerbaijan party wins the parliamentary election by a wide margin after a campaign in which several opposition leaders are arrested or otherwise harassed by the government. International observers claim the election failed to meet democratic standards, and thousands of people turn out in the streets of Baku to protest the results. The constitutional court annuls the results in ten districts, ordering new polls to take place in May 2006.
July 2006 – An extensive survey conducted by the World Bank says corruption in Azerbaijan did not improve between 2002 and 2005.
July 2006 – Haci Mammadov, former head of the interior ministry's criminal investigation department, confesses to murdering Elmar Huseinov at the behest of dismissed minister Farhad Aliyev. Aliyev maintains his innocence. Mammadov also admits to killing fellow interior ministry official Azer Ismaylov.
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