JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – South Korean president Park Geun-hye will visit Uzbekistan next week as part of a tour of Central Asia that also includes Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, media reported quoting an Uzbek government source. There are large Koran ethnic minorities living in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s financial police unit has calculated that around 290b tenge (roughly $1.6b) has been embezzled since the beginning of 2013.
Rather ironically the head of the unit, Marat Akhmetzhanov, gave this gloomy assessment of the endemic nature of corruption in Kazakhstan on the eve of a celebration — the 20th anniversary of the formation of the Kazakh financial police.
“In the past year and a half more than 15,000 offences were registered by the Agency,” he said. “Almost 400 cases were opened in the last 18 months against oil theft and smuggling.”
Still, people trying to embezzle cash are being caught and many of these are state officials.
Tursunbek Omurzakov, a member of parliament, said that corruption was rampant.
“Bribery has become the major obstacle to foreign investment,” he said.
Of course none of this is new. The real challenge for Kazakhstan is whether it is going to be able to do anything about it.
As Sarah Lain, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said schemes to embezzle money from businesses and to dodge tax in Kazakhstan had become relatively sophisticated.
“The use of complex networks of offshore companies, proxy owners, ‘fixers’ and offshore bank accounts is common practice amongst the higher echelons of the Kazakh business elite,” she said.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An earthquake measuring 5.5 magnitude hit Turkmenistan, roughly 120km north of the port of Turkmenbasy, the US Geological Survey said.The earthquake was deep, 12.2km below the surface, and no injuries or deaths were reported. Central Asia is prone to earthquakes.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A contingent of 140 Georgian soldiers flew to the Central African Republic (CAR) to support an EU military mission, media reported. The deployment to CAR — where Georgia has no historical, cultural, linguistic or diplomatic links — is designed to promote Georgia’s drive to join the EU.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Days after buying an extra 10% stake in Azerbaijan’s biggest gas project, Turkey agreed a $3.3b credit line for a subsidiary of SOCAR, the Azerbaijani state-owned energy company. The loan, which cements the two countries’ alliance, will be spent on building an oil refinery in Turkey.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Four prisoners at a jail near Astana have slashed their stomachs with knives to protest against squalid living conditions and humiliating treatment from guards, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Human rights groups often cite poor prison conditions and the abuse of inmates as a major problem in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) -Turkey plans to increase the amount of gas from Turkmenistan that it transports to Europe, media quoted Turkish President Abdullah Gul as saying at the end of a trip to Ankara by Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. Turkmenistan has become a major gas producer over the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
YEREVAN/Armenia, JUNE 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia intends to honour Anastas Mikoyan, a senior member of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s government, by erecting a statue of him in the centre of Yerevan.
Many Armenians, though, are appalled by the decision to build a statue to Mikoyan — a man accused of signing the death warrants of hundreds of his countrymen in the 1930s during the so-called purges. They suspect it is part of a wider plot to curry favour with Russia where Stalin and his associates have experienced something of a resurgence in popularity.
Armenia views Russia as a key ally, ensuring that there is a military balance with Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus and offering the sugar-sweet potential of joining its Eurasian Economic Union, which also includes Kazakhstan and Belarus.
With a hint of dry irony, Alina Abrahamyan, a 35-year-old historian, said: “This is another brilliant example of crawling under Moscow’s feet. Or it is just Moscow’s decision to erect Mikoyan’s monument in its Armenian suburb?”
Mikoyan was a Bolshevik and Soviet statesman who served under Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev. Mikoyan was the only Soviet politician to remain at the highest levels of power within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and some revere him for this.
Some others also say that Mikoyan was an adept politician who was able to argue the Soviet Union’s position among the top statesmen of the day.
“Mikoyan was a politician equal to Churchill. It was due to him that the world escaped a third World War, as he was the famously able to calm the Caribbean tensions down,” 70-year-old Maya Manouelian said. “But at the same time we know that he signed executions of so many Armenians. He, though, did not have an alternative as his political status forced him to do it.”
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in southern Kyrgyzstan have evacuated 35 families from the enclave of Barak, roughly half its population, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Barak is surrounded by Uzbek territory and the exodus is another indicator of growing tension between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Foreign investment in Georgia jumped to $260m in the first quarter of 2014, a 15% increase from a year earlier, the statistics agency reported. Foreign investment is a vital part of Georgia’s economy. The government has tried to restore investor confidence after two destabilising elections.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)