5 Manat

Robert Kalina designed this note the same year his euro banknote designs entered circulation across the eurozone — Azerbaijan effectively hired the man of the moment. The OeBS contract for the Azerbaijani manat series followed a broader post-Soviet pattern of young Caucasian states outsourcing security printing to established European houses while domestic infrastructure remained undeveloped.

The 2005 manat series replaced a severely devalued transitional currency at a rate that wiped out four zeros, a redenomination timed to coincide with rising oil revenues from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline coming online.