MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Denmark’s oil service company Blue Water Shipping said it had won a contract worth around $350m to build 15 new module carrying vessels for Kazakhstan’s main oil producer, Tengizchevroil. Norway’s VARD and Dubai-registered Topaz Energy & Marine will be part of the Blue Water-led consortium, which will deliver the 15 vessels by the end of 2021.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
MAY 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a statement to the UN, Kazakhstan announced plans to generate 50% of its electricity from alternative energy sources by 2050. This is an ambitious target. In 2014, renewable sources accounted for just 0.5% of production. The Kazakh government often lays out grandiose plans for its economic development. Green energy is the dominant theme of EXPO 2017, a major exhibition scheduled for next year in Astana.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Norwegian telecoms company Telenor said that its deputy chair- man Frank Dangeard had stepped down as the company continued to grapple with corruption allegations over VimpelCom’s dealings in Uzbekistan. Telenor owns a 33% stake in Amsterdam-based, Russian telecoms operator VimpelCom. Telenor wants to sell its stake in VimpelCom, valued at around $2b.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
MAY 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazkommertsbank’s chairman, Kenes Rakishev, said he is ready to buy out minority shareholders offering 211 tenge ($0.63) per share. The deal, which is expected to be concluded by the end of the year, will cost $145m and will give Mr Rakishev full ownership of the bank. Directly and indirectly, Mr Rakishev now owns 71% of Kazkommertsbank.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Armenian government re-submitted a bill to parliament to write- off part of the Hradzan cement plant’s debt, in an attempt to save the company from bankruptcy. Last month, parliament rejected an earlier bill designed to pardon 510m dram ($1.1m) that the company owes in unpaid tax.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
MAY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia exported 11.6m bottles of wine in 2015, an increase of 45% from 2014, its national wine agency said. Total revenues earned from wines increased by 15% to $26.9m. Wine is an important export for Georgia. It has been heavily marketing its wine and its status as one of the original wine-making countries. Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are the biggest markets for Georgian wine.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
ALMATY, MAY 6 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in Romania ordered the seizure of the Petromidia refinery part-owned by a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas as they re-opened an investigation into its privatisation in the 2000s.
The seizure of the refinery comes only a few days after China’s CEFC China Energy Company Limited completed a $680m deal to buy a 51% stake in KMG International, the Kazmunaigas subsidiary that owns the Petromidia refinery. Kazmunaigas has been looking to sell off assets and raise cash to help it through a sustained economic downturn.
Rompetrol was renamed KMG International in 2014, although the Rompetrol brand still lingers.
Romanian investigators have been focused on recovering cash they say is owed to it after a deal by the late Dinu Patriciu to buy the Petromidia refinery in 2003 from the state for $760m through Rompetrol, which he owned. He bought the Petromidia refinery from the government not with cash but with a bond.
In 2007, Patriciu sold Rompetrol and its daughter companies to Kazmunaigas for $1.6b.
When in 2010 Rompetrol’s bonds reached maturity, Kazmunaigas refused to pay the government the $600m coupon. Instead it gave the Romanian government a 45% stake in Rompetrol. This was reduced to 18% in 2014 after the Romanian government agreed to sell Kazakhstan a 27% stake for $200m.
KMG International said it had not been involved in any wrongdoing and that this legal case could damage its business plans in Romania.
“These are new developments which may have significant negative impact on KMG’s strategic objectives and development plans in Romania,” the press service said in a statement.
The company later also said it is also ready to take legal action.
“We will analyse the facts about the charges and to what extent such deeds justify the seizure of company assets. If we find that the seizure is not justified, we will challenge those seizures,” Gheorghe Albu, a lawyer for KMG International lawyer, said.
Petromidia is Romania’s largest refinery and is situated near Năvodari on the Black Sea coast.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
BISHKEK, MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rights campaigners in Kyrgyzstan were celebrating an unexpected victory over a proposed law that would have imposed restrictions on local NGOs with links to foreign funding and influences.
In a sign of the growing maturity of Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary democracy, Kyrgyz lawmakers voted 65 to 46 against introducing a law that was supposedly based on Russia’s so-called foreign agents law. This would have meant that NGOs receiving funding from abroad would have had to register with a special database and agree to increased oversight.
Mihra Rittmann, the Human Rights Watch Kyrgyzstan researcher, said that Russia had used its own version of the law to carry out intrusive searches that have forced some NGOs to close.
“This is an important decision by Kyrgyzstan’s parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh,” she wrote. “Kyrgyzstan is Central Asia’s only parliamentary democracy and today’s rejection of the bill is a reminder of the positive role the Jogorku Kenesh can play in upholding Kyrgyzstan’s human rights commitments.”
Even before the vote on Thursday, the bill had been watered down taking out some of the more controversial wording, such as references to foreign agents with its undertone of espionage.
Still, seeing off the bill altogether is a victory for more liberal, Western- minded Kyrgyz who had worried about the expanding influence of Russia in Kyrgyzstan and the wider region in general.
Zhanar Akayev, an MP for the ruling Social Democratic Party, explained that economics had also played a role in defeating the bill.
“Many international organisations expressed their concern,” he was quoted by media as saying. “We get financial assistance from them in many fields, including healthcare, education, and agriculture, among others. We need this money.”
And this view was largely reflected outside parliament too.
Galina, 25, said she was relieved the bill had been voted down.
“Overall I think that the less the number of laws and regulations, the better it is,” she said. “I was afraid, that the state would use this law for its own purposes.”
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
MAY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Last year, teachers in Nukus, in western Uzbekistan, received chickens, potatoes and carrots in lieu of their salaries because the authorities had run out of cash to pay them, RFE/RL reported. Wage arrears and liquidity shortages have become commonplace in Uzbekistan. Last week, teachers in Tashkent complained that they had not received salaries for two months. An economic downturn has hit Uzbekistan and its neighbours in Central Asia hard.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – At an anti-corruption summit organised in London by British PM David Cameron, Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili said his government will consider creating a public register of company information that includes data on beneficial owners. He also said that the government will set up partnerships with other countries to improve cooperation between different intelligence agencies.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)