Author Archives: admin

Georgia picks CBanker

MARCH 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Central Bank picked Koba Gvenetadze, a former IMF banker, to be its chief, replacing Giorgi Kadagidze whose term finished in February. The following day, President Giorgi Margvelashvili approved Mr Gvenetadze’s 7-year term at the Bank. Georgia’s economy has been under increased pressure from the falling value of the lari and rising inflation linked to a fall in oil prices and recession in Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Kazakh Court cuts ex-PM jail sentence

MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Appeal Court cut a jail sentence handed down to former PM Serik Akhmetov, jailed last year for corruption, to eight years from10 years. Akhmetov was jailed last year in a high-profile case. He was PM for 18 months until April 2014 and was then defence minister. The case drew attention to Kazakhstan’s reputation for corruption.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Sex blackmail scandal rocks Georgia

MARCH 11/14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI — Georgian government officials and opposition MPs appear to have been the target of a blackmail plot after a series of sex tapes were posted online.

Videos of two Georgian women MPs and two men from the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, apparently having extramarital sex, were uploaded to Youtube.

The videos were taken down quickly but not before news of their existence had gone viral. Georgia’s conservative society was both outraged by the videos of the officials having sex and also at the breach of privacy.

Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili said the security agencies had detained five people in connection with the plot.

“All the law enforcement agencies are involved in the investigation, we need to put an end to terrorising the society with such videos once and for all,” he said.

News reports said the originators of the videos contacted their targets before uploading the videos, demanding that they resign from their posts.

For Georgians the emergence of the videos is a reminder of the old- school Soviet- style pressure techniques which they thought they had left behind.

It’s unclear if the blackmail plot is linked to a parliamentary election planned for later this year.

Privacy, surveillance, and blackmail are all hot issues with the upcoming elections next October. The current government campaigned strongly against surveillance of citizens and politicians before they came to power in 2012.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Kazakhstan ratifies EU trade deal

MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Senate ratified a trade deal with the European Union which Kazakh foreign minister Yerlan Idrissov said had far reaching implications. Mr Idrissov said: “The most important part of the new treaty is the trade section, which offers additional guarantees of stability to our European partners and will help raise Kazakhstan’s investment appeal.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

BA cuts UK- Azerbaijan route as demand falls

MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – British Airways will cut its route to Baku from April 29 because it has become unprofitable, another indication of the severity of the economic downturn that has hit Central Asia and the South Caucasus in general and Azerbaijan in particular.

Baku is BP’s major regional hub and British Airways had been flying six times a week direct to Baku from Heathrow. Its decision to cut the route, which has been serviced by a British airline since 1995, further cuts the region off from Europe.

Over the past three years, British Airways has cut routes to Bishkek, Tbilisi and Almaty. By stopping flights to Baku it pulls back from the region altogether.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Kazakhstan’s energy firm schedules Kashagan work

MARCH 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state- owned energy firm, said work at the Kashagan offshore oil field is on schedule and it expects the field to be ready for production by October 2016. Kazmunaigas’ CEO Sauat Mynbayev said he is still unsure about the volumes that Kashagan will produce in November-December 2016. The consortium developing Kashagan, which includes Kazmunaigas, Shell, Exxon, Total, Eni, Inpex and CNPC, has been replacing damaged pipes.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Armenian Orange rebrands

MARCH 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Orange Armenia, one of the players in the country’s telecoms market, is preparing to rebrand to adjust its identity to Ucom, the fibre optic cable company that bought it last September. Ucom’s green colours will soon replace Orange’s trademark tone. France’s Orange previously owned Orange Armenia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

British Airways cuts flight to Azerbaijani capital, its final link with region

MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – British Airways will cut a 21-year-old route when it drops its six-times-a- week service to Baku from London.

It said that poor demand, linked to the sharp economic downturn that has engulfed the region in the past 18 months, has made the route unprofitable.

“We have taken the decision to suspend the London Heathrow to Baku route as it is no longer commercially viable,” a statement read.

“The final service from Heathrow will be on April 29, 2016 and the final service departing Baku will be on the same day.”

The London-Baku route is the last remaining BA flight into Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

It has slowly dropped the region’s capitals as destinations.

Yerevan and Bishkek were dropped in 2012, Tbilisi in 2013 and Almaty in 2014.

But symbolically, dropping Baku is more serious than any of the others. Baku is the centre of BP’s operations in the region which has always driven demand.

It was also a route that BA first flew in 1995, four years after the break up of the Soviet Union. It handed over to British Mediterranean Airways in 2003 before BMI took it on in 2007. BA then reclaimed the route in 2012.

As BA has dropped routes to Central Asia and the South Caucasus, though, regional airlines have stepped in. Air Astana now boasts it is the only airline that flies directly between London and Almaty/Astana.

Soon, Azerbaijan Airlines will be able to give the same boast on flights to Baku.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Uzbek health sector receives funding

MARCH 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kuwait Fund for Arab Development said it had agreed to give a $24m loan to finance buying urology equipment for hospitals in Uzbekistan. The Kuwait Fund is sponsored by the Kuwaiti government. Kuwait has, over the past couple of years, developed more interest in Central Asia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Azerbaijan and Iran swap prisoners

MARCH 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan handed over five Iranians it was holding in jail in return for six Azerbaijanis imprisoned in Iran, the latest prisoner swap between the two neighbours. Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran have improved dramatically over the past couple of years. As well as swapping prisoners, Azerbaijan has been building relations with Iran and signing deals in various sectors including transport and power.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)