Category Archives: Uncategorised

Azerbaijan jails five guilty of killing journalist

APRIL 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan found five men guilty of beating to death a journalist in August, sentencing them to prison.

The case triggered public debates in Azerbaijan where the authorities have appeared to hold critical journalists in contempt with their own clampdown on the media over the past few years.

The five men received sentences of between 9 and 13 years for knocking Rasim Aliyev to the floor and beating him in broad daylight in Baku. He later died in hospital from his injuries.

They were relatives and friends of Cavid Huseynov, an Azerbaijani international football player. Aliyev had criticised Mr Huseynov as “immoral and ill-bred” in a Facebook post for goading supporters of Apollon, a Cypriot team, at a football match by waving a Turkish flag.

After the verdict, Aliyev’s father said: “All of them are criminals and they killed my son on purpose. They planned the attack before meeting my son and they killed him.”

Mr Huseynov faces a trial for not reporting the crime. He has not been linked directly with the beating.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Turkmenistan introduces pre-marriage HIV test

APRIL 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an effort to combat the spread of HIV, Turkmenistan introduced mandatory tests for couples seeking to obtain a marriage licence. By making it a requirement, the Turkmen government is effectively banning HIV-positive people from getting married. Human rights groups have said that this is a violation of personal choice and freedom. Turkmenistan discloses little data on HIV infections.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Kazakh agriculture exports boom

APRIL 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Exports of agricultural products from Kazakhstan increased by 33% in 2015, Yeremek Kosherbayev, vice minister of agriculture said. Media didn’t report his reasons for the sharp increase but Kazakhstan has been investing heavily in boosting its efficiency in agriculture. One of its biggest exports, now, is wheat.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Kyrgyzstan introduces revolutionary holiday

APRIL 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz lawmakers approved a bill to introduce a new holiday on April 7, the anniversary of the 2010 revolution that toppled the regime of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. The 2010 revolution holds a highly symbolic meaning for Kyrgyz people and is the main source of legitimacy for the current leadership. The 2010 revolution was Kyrgyzstan’s second revolution in five years.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Editorial: Uzbek buses

APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – People in Uzbekistan will find it harder to pay both their utility bills and bus fares from this month.

The government has ordered price increases across the board from April 1, signalling latent inflation in its economy.

Utility prices went up around 8.5% but bus prices have risen by 20% and this is going to be significant. Public transport in Tashkent delivers several hundreds thousand passenger journeys every day, making bus ticket prices a highly sensitive issue.

The city government blamed high fuel prices for the new ticket price of 1,200 sum ($0.41 at the official rate).

Officially, the Uzbek sum has lost only 10% of its value over the past six months against the US dollar, but Black Market rates tell a different story.

The Uzbek currency is spiralling downwards and this will push up inflation. Accurate economic data is hard to come by from Uzbekistan but there is no arguing with the higher bus prices. This is the accurate inflation measure that is needed to gauge price rises in Uzbekistan.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Georgia sets election date

APRIL 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili set the date for the upcoming parliamentary elections for Oct. 8. Mr Margvelashvili said he had consulted with PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili, a member of the Georgian Dream government coalition, who signed the decree the following day.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Kazakhstan threatens Karachaganak with fine

APRIL 4 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government said it was imposing a fine on the consortium operating the Karachaganak gas field in north Kazakhstan, a blow to the companies involved in the project and to corporate governance in the country.

According to Lukoil, one of the companies in the consortium, the fine amounts to $1.6b, potentially the largest-ever penalty imposed on an energy consortium in Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh government has not commented on the size of the fine.

Eni, Shell (through BG), Chevron, Lukoil and state-owned Kazmunaigas are all part of the Karachaganak consortium.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Kazakh President visits Cuba

APRIL 2 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev visited Cuba for the first time. The visit came shortly after Mr Nazarbayev’s trip to the US for the Nuclear Security Summit. In Cuba, Mr Nazarbayev met President Raul Castro and discussed bilateral cooperation and trade.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Business comment: Panama’s Pandora’s Box

APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The leaking of millions of documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossak Fonesca, dubbed the Panama Papers, hit the headlines this week both for the number of secret documents it disclosed and for the profiles of those involved in hiding money in offshore accounts.

For the Central Asia/South Caucasus region, one important story is the large-scale involvement of the Azerbaijani Presidential family in the country’s gold business.

Investigations on the awarding of the Chovdar project contract to a consortium of offshore companies had already unveiled that Ilham Aliyev’s family was behind Globex International, which owned 11% of the venture.

The latest leaks, though, showed that Mr Aliyev’s daughters, Leyla and Arzu, in fact, also owned Panama-registered Londex Resources, which owned another 45% of the project.

This makes the presidential family the majority owner, with a combined stake of 56%, of a project that holds gold reserves previously valued by the government at around $2.5b.

Other important figures from the South Caucasus and Central Asia, such as Georgian billionaire and former PM Bidzina Ivanishvili and Nurali Aliyev, grandson of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, were also revealed to have hidden money in offshore accounts.

But this, although morally questionable, is not an illegal practice.

What is suspicious, and unfair, is when the Azerbaijani government awards the Presidential family’s unknown offshore companies a very favourable gold contract.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Turkmenistan relaxes currency controls

APRIL 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Airport security in Turkmenistan has allegedly relaxed regulations on the transit of foreign currency since the beginning of the month. The opposition website in exile Alternative News Turkmenistan said that, informally, passengers at Ashgabat Airport are now allowed to carry foreign currency worth up to $10,000 without having to declare it, over three times the previous limit.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)