Tag Archives: appointments

Akishev was groomed for Kazakh Central Bank top job

NOV. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Daniyar Akishev’s promotion to head the Kazakh Central Bank may have taken observers by surprise but to those who know the 39-year-old, it is a job he has been groomed for.

Mr Akishev is a veteran of the Central Bank, where he worked in various positions from 1996 to 2014 before moving to the Akorda as economic adviser to President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

In 2007 Mr Akishev was rumoured to be in pole-position for taking on the role of new chief of the financial regulator.

Instead has was named deputy head of the Central Bank, a position he held for seven years, under three different bosses.

In particular, Central Bank insiders said he achieved professional maturity under Grigori Marchenko, a respected liberal economist, who often clashed with Mr Nazarbayev on economic policies.

There have been wobbles, though, in Mr Akishev’s rise to the top. In December 2008, ominously, he said the economic situation was ideal for Kazakhstan.

“The Central Bank has no problems with the exchange rate of the tenge, quite the contrary,” he told RIA Novosti in an interview.

Two months later, the Bank devalued the tenge by 19%.

Media quoted some local analysts as saying that Mr Akishev lacks independence because of his young age and his lack of political authority. But Mr Akishev is the same age as Mr Marchenko was when he was named head of the Central Bank for the first time in 1999 and is five years older than Oraz Dzhandosov was, when he became Central Bank chief in 1996.

Mr Akishev’s predecessor, Kairat Kelimbetov, who held the job for two years during which the tenge lost half its value, had a different profile and no background at the Central Bank.

Mr Akishev might have accepted possibly the toughest job in Kazakhstan, but he is also one of the few people in the country with the experience and background to take it on.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Azerbaijani President sacks long-serving Security Minister

OCT. 18/20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev sacked National Security Minister Eldar Mahmudov two days before police arrested seven other senior officials and accused them of abuse of office.

The move surprised analysts of Azerbaijan’s murky political scene as Mr Mahmudov had been considered a close ally of Mr Aliyev.

He had held the position as the powerful National Security Minister for 11 years and no reason was given for his dismissal. Mr Aliyev had handed him the position of National Security Minister within a year of taking over as president from his father.

Although Mr Mahmudov has not been arrested, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor-General opened criminal cases into his seven officials for abuse of office.

“Investigative operations have raised suspicions about a group of ministry officials abusing service powers, illegally intervening in the activities of entrepreneurs in violation of the law on entrepreneurship, and violating the judicially and legally protected interests of different individuals,” it said in a statement.

Human rights groups and opposition activists have previously accused Mr Aliyev of undermining his opponents by accusing them of corruption.

The arrests and the sacking of Mr Mahmudov, whether they are linked to corruption or not, add a degree of instability to Azerbaijan, already rocked by the imprisonment of journalists and opposition activists.

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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)

 

Kazakh state company director resigns

SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Abat Nurseitov resigned as general director of KMG EP, the London-listed unit of Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company. Mr Nurseitov had been general director since January 2013. Dastan Abdulgafarov, the CFO, was appointed interim CEO.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)

Georgian PM sacks foreign minister

SEPT. 1 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian PM Irakli Garibashvili sacked his foreign minister in a cabinet reshuffle that once again promoted people close to his own political mentor, Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Giorgi Kvirikashvili was shifted to the foreign ministry from the economy ministry and Tbilisi’s deputy mayor Dimitri Kumsishvili took over the economy ministry brief. Both men had previously worked at Cartu Bank, Mr Ivanishavili’s private bank. Mr Garibashvili, the PM, also worked at Cartu Bank.

Opponents of PM Garibashvili said that he was just doing his master’s bidding by replacing Tamar Beruchashvili, who had disagreed with him publicly on some policies, as the foreign minister but he said the changes were linked to a shift in policy direction.

“The government focuses on economic development and employment. This should also determine our foreign policy,” he said .

Korneli Kakachia, a professor of political science at Tbilisi State University and director of the Georgian Institute of Politics, told The Bulletin that Mr Ivanishvili single-handedly decides what happens in government.

“Mr Ivanishvili only trusts insiders with whom he has worked. That is why Cartubank employees have a privileged position,” he said.

This is a widely held view. Earlier this year, the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said they were concerned that Mr Ivanishvili wanted to promote people who worked at Cartu Bank to prominent government positions.

“A pattern can be detected of individuals who were formerly employed by companies associated with Bidzina Ivanishvili being appointed to senior positions in the public service,” it said in April.

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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)

Uzbekistan sacks defender of Avant Garde art collection

ALMATY/Kazakhstan, AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin)  — Reports from Uzbekistan said that Marinika Babanazarova, the curator and de facto defender of the world famous Savitsky Collection in Nukus, Uzbekistan, has been sacked.

Ms Babanazarova has held the job for over 30 years. She took over from Igor Savitsky himself and considered it her duty to keep the collection together despite pressure to split it up.

She confirmed to the New York Times that she had been sacked. Earlier reports said that the Uzbek authorities had fired her for stealing pictures and making forgeries, accusations she denied.

Relations between Ms Babanazarova and the Uzbek authorities have generally been strained. In 2011, they blocked her from travelling to New York to see the premiere of a film about the collection.

Savitsky was a Soviet archaeologist and painter who collected, often at great personal risk, banned avant-garde art. He travelled across the Soviet Union to collect the art, from dissident artists or from their relatives, and bring it back to his base in the remote city of Nukus in western Uzbekistan. There he was able to avoid the attention of the authorities.

The collection of roughly 90,000 pieces only achieved international fame after his death and the subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. It has also put Nukus, a scruffy town once classed as a secret because of its chemical weapons production, on the international art trail.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)

 

Turkmen president sacks officials

JULY 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov sacked deputy PM Annamukhamed Gochyev “for serious drawbacks in his work” and several other government officials on allegations of corruption. Mr Berdymukhamedov rotates ministers to reduce their power.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)

Tajikistan sacks Central Bank chief

MAY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon sacked the head of Tajikistan’s Central Bank Abdujabbor Shirinov, media reported, an apparent reaction to the continued slide of the somoni currency.

This year the somoni has nose-dived by around 20% against the US dollar as it struggled to cope with a fall in the value of the Russian rouble and a dip in Russia’s economy which has hit remittances.

Mr Shirinov, a previous Tajik ambassador to the United States and head of the Central Bank since 2012 has taken increasingly desperate measures to defend the currency. Last month he ordered exchange kiosks to be banned but instead of giving the government more control over its currency, it just forced money changers into the black market.

The Dushanbe-based ASIA-Plus reported that Jamshed Nourmahmadzoda had been appointed Tajikistan’s new Central Bank chief. Mr Nourmahmadzoda was previously head of Amonatbonk.

ENDS

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(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)

 

Top TALCO manager sacked

FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s president Emomali Rakhmon sacked the managing-director at TALCO, the company that runs its aluminium smelter, media reported. No official reason was given for sacking Sadriddin Sharipov from TALCO which generates around 70% of Tajikistan’s foreign earnings.

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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)

Berdymukhamedov sacks energy chief

>>Sackings come shortly after currency devaluation>>

JAN. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — It’s been a busy start to 2015 for Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. He ordered the devaluation by 20% of the manat on Jan. 1 and now he has sacked both the head of the state gas company Turkmengaz and the head of the Central Bank.

Mr Berdymukhamedov appears frustrated at the relative sluggish nature of recent growth in the Turkmen economy. Much of this can be attributed to the 50% fall in energy prices and the drop in the value of the Russian rouble, so important for the economies of Central Asia.

But Mr Berdymukhamedov said that Turkmengaz head Kakageldy Abdullayev was to blame.

“We could have raised production and exports of liquefied gas and other products which are in great demand on world markets,” Reuters quoted him telling a government meeting.

Mr Berdymukhamedov is fond of culling his top officials. Mr Abdullayev had only been in the job for a year. His replacement was named as Charymuhammed Hommadov.

The day before, Mr Berdymukhamedov had also sacked the head of the Central Bank, the head of the state-run Prezidentbank and also the agriculture bank Daikhanbank.

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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)

Kazakh President finds new role for C.Bank ex-head

DEC. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed Kairat Kelimbetov, ex head of the Kazakh Central Bank, as head of the Astana Financial Centre, media reported. Mr Kelimbetov has kept a low profile since being sacked as head of the CBank in Nov. after two years in the job. The Astana Financial Centre is a state project to promote the Kazakh capital as an international finance centre.

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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)