Category Archives: Uncategorised

Cash begins to run short at Agroinvestbank ATMs in Tajikistan

DUSHANBE, JUNE 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The sharp economic downturn that dragged Tojiksodirotbank into administration earlier this year is circling another potential Tajik banking victim.

People lining up to use Agroinvestbank ATMs in the capital Dushanbe complained of a shortage of cash and worried that it too was going to be placed under the Central Bank’s administration. A company spokesperson denied this.

Ozod, a 42-years-old driver, said he had checked several ATMs across the city to try to find some cash.

“None of them had money,” he said. “I called the bank and they told me to check this one, as they said they had put some money in it. Now, I am waiting here and I hope I can withdraw some money to buy groceries before the Ramadan holiday.”

Nigora, a 34-year-old employee of one of Dushanbe’s many international NGOs, said that she had lost trust in Tajik banks.

“We had Tojiksodirotbank and now this,” she said. “I want to change my bank but I don’t know which one I should choose because I don’t trust the banks anymore.”

In May, Tojiksodirotbank said it had run out of cash and asked the Central Bank to put it under its administration. It also started talks to sell a stake to the EBRD. Last year the IMF said a drop in the value of the somoni and a fall in remittances being sent from Russia had undermined the economy and threatened the banking sector’s liquidity.

An Agroinvestbank employee denied rumours the bank was facing bankruptcy. Instead she said that a religious holiday was pressuring the bank’s resources. “People need more money ahead of Ramadan and that’s why cash is drying up,” she said.

The Conway Bulletin’s Tajikistan correspondent toured Agroinvestbank ATMs in Dushanbe. Most were empty, some were able to give up to $25 and others ran out of cash midway through delivering it.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Italy accuses ex-MP taking $2.6m Azerbaijan bribe

JUNE 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Italian authorities accused Luca Volontè, a former MP in Italy’s parliament and also in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), of taking a €2.3m ($2.6m) bribe in 2012-14 to vote down a resolution to condemn Azerbaijan for mistreating political prisoners.

This is an important case for Azerbaijan as, if proved, the allegations will once again highlight a culture of corruption in Azerbaijan.

Mr Volontè’s lawyers denied the allegations of bribery and money laundering.

The motion to condemn Azerbaijan’s treatment of 85 prisoners, described as political prisoners, was voted down in Jan. 2013 by PACE representatives 128 to 79.

Now Italian prosecutors said Mr Volontè, who organised the voting down of the motion, took €2.3m from Azerbaijani companies linked to the government. The prosecutors’ investigation said Baktelekom, a Baku-based telecoms company, made 18 payments between 2012 and 2014 to companies linked to Mr Volontè through a number of different banks.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Georgia’s minister reiterates Saakashvili threat

JUNE 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s justice minister, Tea Tsulukiani, reiterated that former president Mikheil Saakashvili would be arrested if he travelled to Georgia to campaign in a parliamentary election set for October. The Georgian government has put out arrest warrants for Mr Saakashvili connected to various financial crimes when he was in power between 2004 and 2013. Mr Saakashvili is currently governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine. He has said that he would like to return to Georgia ahead of the election.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Mudslide blocks Russia-Georgia trade routes

JUNE 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A major mudslide has blocked one of the most important trade routes between Georgia and Russia for more than a week, media reported. The mudslide on June 23 at the Upper Lars checkpoint is especially important for Armenia. It is the only major route linking Russia and Armenia. Armenia is largely reliant on goods being imported in from Russia. It has decent relations with Iran to the south but poor relations with neighbours Azerbaijan and Turkey.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Turkey says two Kyrgyz and Uzbek citizens attacked Istanbul airport

BISHKEK, JUNE 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkish security forces said that two of the three attackers at Istanbul’s international airport on Tuesday were from Central Asia, highlighting Islamic extremist recruitment in the region.

At least 44 people died and another 240 people were injured when the three attackers opened fire with machine guns outside the terminal building and then blew themselves up. Nobody has claimed responsibility, although the radical IS group is the main suspect.

The Turkish government has now said one of the attackers was from the North Caucasus and the others were from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan has not commented; Kyrgyzstan initially denied a connection.

But analysts said that if two of the attackers were proved to be from Central Asia, it would show the increasingly effective recruitment network IS has developed in the region.

Anna Matveeva of King’s College London said Central Asia had become one of IS’s main recruitment pools because of its various social problems and the marginalisation of pious Muslims.

“Radicalisation and violence is definitely on the rise in Central Asia,” she said. “I think this phenomenon is growing.”

Central Asian governments are worried about the rise in IS recruitment in the area.

In 2015, a senior Tajik police commander defected to IS. Last month, the Kazakh government blamed an attack in Aktobe, in the northwest of the country, on a group which had links with Syria.

Analysts have said part of the problem is that security forces in Central Asia don’t coordinate effectively.

Kate Mallinson, a Central Asia analyst at London-based GPW, said if proved that two of the Istanbul attackers were from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan there was likely to be a reaction by the security forces.

“The tragic attack in Istanbul will give the Central Asian governments further carte blanche in their application of punitive measures against Islamic movements in the Central Asian region,” she said.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Azerbaijan’s SOCAR exports gas to Turkey

JUNE 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR Gas, a Turkey-based subsidiary of Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, said it sold around 330m cubic metres of gas in Q1 2016 to the Turkish domestic market. The Turkish government decided to buy up to 1.2b cubic metres of SOCAR’s gas this year. Previously, SOCAR gas exports to Turkey were mostly destined to the Petkim petrochemical plant, in which it owns a majority stake.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Lukoil to invest $1b in its Uzbekistan projects

JUNE 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian oil and gas company Lukoil said it will invest around $1b in its Uzbekistan projects and is looking to find South Korean banks that want to back its plans. Lukoil wants to build a gas processing plant in the country and treble its output at the Gissar gas field to 4.8b cubic metres/year by 2017. Lukoil is looking to strengthen its position in Uzbekistan, one of its core markets, ahead of a possible Eurobond issue.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Kazakh police arrests several men

JUNE 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Kazakhstan said they had arrested several men in two villages near Karaganda in the centre of the country as they prepared explosives for a terror attack. Kazakhstan’s security forces have been on high alert since a series of attacks in Aktobe at the start of June killed around two dozen people. Officials linked the attack to radical Islamists.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

TAV starts construction of new terminal at Georgian Airport

JUNE 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – TAV Airports, a Turkish holding company that operates airports in Georgia, said it has started construction of a new terminal at Tbilisi airport. TAV said the project, which will include a new runway, will be completed by the end of 2017. TAV operates two airports in Georgia, in Tbilisi and Batumi. France’s ParisAeroport owns 38% in TAV, which is also listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Pen Portrait: Kyrgyz rights activist: Azimzhan Askarov

JULY 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In Kyrgyzstan and abroad, Azimzhan Askarov divides opinion.

Charged with inciting ethnic hatred and participating in the murder of a police officer, Askarov was imprisoned for life in the south of Kyrgyzstan in 2010 after ethnic fighting killed nearly 400 people in the city of Osh.

It was a angry time, only a few months after a violent revolution, that enflamed historic, simmering tension between the two ethnic groups. Askarov’s supporters said that the charges had been fabricated and in July 2015, he received a human rights prize from the US State Department, an award that prompted the Kyrgyz government to downgrade diplomatic ties with Washington.

Now, after pressure from the UN, Kyrgyzstan has agreed to look again at his sentence.

Askarov, 65, was born in Kyrgyzstan into an Uzbek family. He studied in Tashkent before returning to Kyrgyzstan to work as a human rights advocate.

In 2002, Askarov founded the NGO Vozdukh (“air”) to investigate police brutality. According to local accounts, when challenged on why he had chosen to spend his life in the unglamorous, under-paid and dangerous world of human rights in Central Asia, he would say that “human rights are as indispensable as the air”.

Human rights lobby groups said at the time of his trial in 2010 that Askarov has been beaten and mistreated while in detention. Despite several attempts to reverse the sentence, the Supreme Court upheld the decision to keep Askarov in prison for life in 2011.

His supporters said that the state apparatus was working against him to crush a government opponent. The United States agreed but Kyrgyzstan wouldn’t budge. The tipping point came when the United Nations Human Rights Commission said that Askarov had been tortured and mistreated ahead of the trial and called the Kyrgyz authorities to release him.

Surprisingly, this time, the Kyrgyz Supreme Court listened and said it would look at the sentence again in July.

The question now, though, is whether the Supreme Court will seriously consider releasing Askarov over mistreatment before his trial in 2010, a move that would anger and irritate many Kyrgyz politicians who view him with suspicion.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)