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Kazakhstan releases activists

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court of appeal in Kazakhstan suspended prison sentences handed out to two Kazakh activists in January. Yermek Narymbayev and Serikzhan Mambetalin, imprisoned for posting messages on Facebook that the authorities said spread racial hatred, were released from prison and put under house arrest. Human rights activists saw this as a conciliatory move towards the EU ahead of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to Brussels.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Business comment: SOCAR & The EU

APRIL 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR said it hopes to solve the DESFA affair by the end of the year, but should Fluxys’ shareholders officially decide to back out of an earlier plan to buy part of the Greek company, Azerbaijan’s state-owned company will find it hard to comply with EU regulations.

The so-called Third Energy Package is a set of regulations the EU adopted in 2009 with the objective of liberalising its energy market, chiefly by separating the ownership of upstream, midstream and downstream operations, a process known as “unbundling” in Brussels.

According to these rules, SOCAR cannot buy, as it wished, a majority stake in DESFA, the Greek gas distributor.

That would effectively mean that the gas supplier would own the distributor as well.

SOCAR also owns a majority stake in TANAP, a pipeline running across Turkey. SOCAR is allowed to keep its 58% share in TANAP because it lies outside EU jurisdiction.

But when in 2013 it agreed a deal to buy 66% of the debt-ridden Greek company for €400m ($454m), the European Commission stepped in and froze the purchase. It said that SOCAR could own 49% of DESF but no more.

For a year now, SOCAR has tried to find buyers for part of the 66% stake it agreed to buy. If Fluxys flakes, Italian Snam Rete Gas and Dutch Gasunie could be next in line.

Even though SOCAR has become a good friend of the EU for its key role in the completion of the Southern Gas Corridor project, seen by Europe as a viable alternative to gas from Russia, it apparently cannot escape the severe hand of the EU’s army of regulators.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

New refinery opens in Tajikistan

MARCH 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A new refinery opened in Tajikistan’s northern town of Kanibadam, a major boost to the country’s oil products output. Naftrasom, a private company owned by Nosir Usmonov, built the plant with a $3.5m investment. The refinery will have a capacity of 70,000 tonnes. As confirmed by Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, who attended the inauguration, Tajikistan will import raw materials for the plant, mostly from Kazakhstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Ex-Georgian PM buys a giant tree and sails if down the Black Sea coast

MARCH 24 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Bidzina Ivanishvili is known in Georgia through his many different guises. He is a former PM and the de facto leader of the Georgian Dream ruling coalition. He is a billionaire and the country’s richest man. He collects fine art, such as Picasso’s, and keeps a personal zoo of exotic animals, such as penguins, zebras and sharks.

Now, courting more headlines and controversy, can be added the title of tree lover, or tree thief, depending on your point of view.

Pictures from Georgia showed workmen digging up and then moving by barge a 135-year-old tulip tree, the height of a 12-storey build- ing, 30km along the Black Sea coast to Mr Ivanishvili’s garden at one of his homes.

This prompted a barrage of outrage on social media across Georgia as well as from tree experts who questioned whether the tree would survive.

German forestry expert Walter Benneckendorf said the tree would die. “Theoretically it is possible to replant even older trees, but only if it would have been replanted every five years, so the roots are used to it,” he told the Conway Bulletin. “Replanting a 135-year-old tree without the previous measure will result without a question in the tree’s death.”

Activists also said there were only a few dozen tulip trees left in Georgia.

Still in televised remarks, Mr Ivanishvili said that he paid for the tree legally.

“Giant trees are my hobby. I am developing a park where I think it is appropriate,” he said without a trace of irony.

Either way, people on the Black Sea coast were, for a day, treated to the sight of an upright tree apparently sailing serenely along Georgia’s shoreline.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

“World’s biggest bribe scandal” involves Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan

ALMATY, MARCH 29 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — Unaoil, a consultancy based in Monaco, channelled millions of dollars of bribes to Emerging Market governments and their companies, including in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, on behalf of major Western firms, an investigation by Australia’s The Age and The Huffington Post said.

The report used data from a massive cache of leaked emails and corporate documents from 2001-2012 to unveil what it described as “the world’s biggest bribe scandal.”

The Ahsani family, Monaco millionaires Ata and his sons Cyrus and Saman, ran Unaoil as a sort of lobbying intermediary. They denied allegations of bribe paying.

“What we do is integrate Western technology with local capability,” Ata Ahsani told the investigation team.

Effectively, the report said of Unaoil: “Its operatives bribe officials in oil-producing nations to help these clients win government-funded projects. The corrupt officials might rig a tender committee. Or leak inside information. Or ensure a contract is awarded without a competitive tender.”

One of Unaoil’s biggest client was US engineering giant Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a former subsidiary of Halliburton, which operates in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

In both Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, KBR allegedly used Unaoil’s services to reach preferential deals and licences, mostly through personal connections and bribes to public officials.

KBR has not commented.

In Kazakhstan, leaked emails showed that Unaoil allegedly liaised with both Eni (codenamed “the spaghetti house”) and Kazmunaigas officials (codenamed “shashlik”) to secure tenders for KBR at the Kashagan offshore oil project.

Italian oil major Eni has not commented.

In Azerbaijan, both KBR and Swiss ABB allegedly won offshore oil contracts through insider information leaked by an in-country lead who had been bribed by Unaoil.

Swiss ABB has not commented.

After the report was published, police in Monaco raided the head- quarters of Unaoil. The FBI, the British Serious Fraud Office and the Australian Federal Police all launched major bribery investigations linked to the case.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Kyrgyz-Russian Dev. Fund to change rules

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz PM Temir Sariyev said that the misfiring Kyrgyz-Russian Development Fund would reduce the minimum loan it is prepared to hand out to $1m from $3m. The Fund had been criticised as too heavily geared towards large businesses, because of the high loan requirement and the co-financing clauses. Earlier this month Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev sacked Nursulu Akhmetova as chair of the Fund.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Tajik migrant workers appear to be most vulnerable to IS recruitment

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – DUSHANBE — In an apparent effort to shift responsibility for radicalisation away from Tajikistan, the Tajik Prosecutor General, Yusuf Rakhmon, said that around 85% of Tajik citizens who have joined IS in Syria and Iraq were migrant workers recruited in Russia.

Mr Rakhmon also told the state- owned Jumuhuriyat newspaper that official calculations showed 1,094 Tajik citizens fighting for IS.

Tajikistan has been criticised recently for being a soft touch for IS recruiters. Last year a highly regarded Tajik police chief, who had previously travelled to the United States on training missions, joined IS, handing the extremist group one of its biggest publicity coups.

Mr Rakhmon’s comments are important as, although independent research has suggested that disgruntled Tajik migrant workers who have been losing their jobs in the Russian recession are vulnerable to IS recruitment, there has previously been no official acknowledgement of the issue.

Also, the number of Tajik recruits to IS is higher than Mr Rakhmon has previously noted. In June, he said that there were around 400 Tajik fighters with IS. This was updated in November by the Tajik security service which said that 700 Tajiks had joined IS, although 300 had been killed.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Kazakh plane crash-lands

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Bek Air Fokker plane carrying 116 passengers crash-landed at Astana airport, raising safety and security concerns for Kazakh aviation. Pilot Dmitri Rodin was hailed a hero after he performed a near textbook crash-landing after his front landing gear failed to engage as he approached Astana airport. Everybody aboard emerged unscathed from the crash.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Kazakh Pres. visits EU

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev flew to Brussels to hold high-level talks with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and president of the Euro- pean Council Donald Tusk. Mr Nazarbayev wants the EU to consider establishing a visa-free regime for Kazakhstani citizens.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Kazakh President’s daughter updates smartphone ban

MARCH 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Deputy PM Dariga Nazarbayeva said that the recently-imposed ban on the use of smartphones in government buildings in Kazakhstan does not apply to journalists. At a press conference, Ms Nazarbayeva said that the ban is only aimed at reducing leaks of classified documents.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)