MARCH 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan has nearly completed work on building its first communications satellite, media reported. Quoting a Turkmen government statement, media reported that testing on the satellite had finished and that it would launch later this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A consortium led by BP handed out six contracts worth $841m for work on the Shah Deniz II gas project.
Shah Deniz II is the second phase of development at the giant gas field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea. It will feed much of its gas to Europe.
The biggest contract winner was a $528m deal to build compressor stations and other infrastructure in Georgia. This was given to a joint venture between Turkey’s Bechtel International and ENKA.
A $174m contract was given to British construction company Chicago Bridge & Iron for various pipeline and engineering work.
The remaining contracts worth $139m for sub-sea and pipeline engineering were given to Wood Group Kenny Limited, Apply Emtunga, DrillTec GmbH and CSM Bessac.
First gas is expected to flow from Shah Deniz II in 2018. The project is considered vital for the future EU gas supplies.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Turkmen authorities opened an all-women prison, the Central Asia Online website reported quoting a prison official. The prison will hold 850 women and include a 30-bed maternity ward. Soviet-era prisons in Central Asia are regarded as some of the harshest in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, reportedly managed to send a letter to the BBC alleging that she has been held under house arrest for the past five weeks.
If true, the email will confirm rumours that she has been held in her Tashkent apartment since a raid last month. Police reportedly also detained three of Ms Karimova’s close friends and business associates during the raid.
In the email Ms Karimova described how she has been beaten.
“I am under severe psychological pressure, I have been beaten, you can count bruises on my arms,” she wrote, according to the BBC.
Ms Karimova had been discussed as a successor to her father but over the past year her power and influence has, waned. She has lost various businesses in Uzbekistan to rivals and is now under investigation by the authorities in Switzerland for corruption and money laundering.
Ms Karimova is normally active on twitter but since the raid on her home in Tashkent in mid-February, her account has been quiet. This has fuelled speculation that she is under arrest.
The BBC said that they couldn’t confirm 100% that the letter was genuine. They did quote a hand-writing expert, though, saying that she thought there was high probability that the letter was written by Ms Karimova.
Most Uzbeks strongly dislike Ms Karimova who has promoted herself as an international fashion designer and pop singer. Even so, in the letter to the BBC she tried to project herself as a woman of the people defending them against corruption.
“The reason for this Pinochet-style persecution is that I dared to speak up about things that millions are quiet about,” she wrote of her house arrest in a reference to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — It was only ever a matter of time.
Georgia’s government, a coalition called Georgian Dream that first won the 2012 parliamentary election and then the 2013 presidential election, has been going after former government ministers.
That’s the line taken by member of former president Mikheil Saakashvili’s government although the current government has said it is simply following its obligation to investigate alleged crimes.
Former ministers have been tried, and some found guilty, of corruption in what many observers have said is a witch hunt by rivals.
Now Georgia’s prosecution service has called up Mr Saakashvili for question on various cases ranging from the poisoning of a former PM to alleged government misspending and presidential pardons for convicted murderers.
The intent appears clear — to prove that Mr Saakashvili was corrupt and involved in various crimes. Last month his close ally, former PM Vano Merabishvili, was convicted of corruption and abuse of power and sentenced to five years in prison.
Mr Saakashvili has until March 27 to present himself at the prosecutor’s office in Tbilisi for questioning. He is currently in Brussels and has said that he has no intention of attending the hearing.
The United States which has been a long-term ally of Mr Saakashvili has said that it is concerned about the summons. As the United States is also a key ally of Georgia, this makes it harder for the government to pressure Mr Saakashvili into returning to Tbilisi to face awkward questions.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Radical Islamists fighting government forces in Syria’s civil war have attacked and killed people living in a predominantly ethnic Armenian town, news reports have said.
An estimated 2,000 Christian Armenians have fled the city of Kesab in western Syria for Latakia, a nearby town, reports said.
Syria has been home to a large Armenian minority for the past hundred years but thousands have fled to Yerevan since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.
The civil war in Syria presents president Serzh Sargsyan and his government a major headache both externally and domestically.
On a pre-planned trip to a conference in Brussels, Mr Sargsyan voiced his concern and offered help.
The attack is blamed on the Nursa Front, affiliated to Al Qaeda.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A video of former Georgian PM Zurab Zhvania lying dead in a Tbilisi flat in 2005 has surfaced on the internet, rekindling debate over how he died. A court decreed Zhvania died of carbon monoxide poisoning but this has been refuted.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Denizbank, a Turkish bank, has agreed to lend Azerbaijani state-owned energy company SOCAR $500m to build a refinery in Turkey, media reported (March 24). The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation had previously rejected a loan request from SOCAR to build the Star refinery.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The price of fuel in Kyrgyzstan has increased by as much as 6.7% since the beginning of the year, media reported. An official from an industry lobby group blamed increased import prices from Russia for the rise. Fuel price rises, especially sharp ones, can generate discontent.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will launch new rules by end-2015 aimed at stemming the flow of cash from businesses to offshore accounts, media quoted the head of analysis at the Kazakh financial police, Olzhas Bektenov, as saying. Kazakhstan has been under pressure to tighten its anti-money laundering regulations.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)