Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Azerbaijani sprinter wins 200m gold medal for Turkey

AUG. 10 2017 (The Bulletin) — Competing for Turkey, Azerbaijan- born sprinter Ramil Guliyev won 200m gold at the World Athletics Championship in London.

The 27-year-old’s shock victory was Turkey’s only medal at the championship and a rare win for a track and field athlete from Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Kazakhstan’s Olga Rypakova, Olympic triple jump champion in 2012, also won a bronze medal.

A jubilant Guliyev did a lap of honour carrying both the Turkish and Azerbaijani flags. He competed for Azerbaijan until 2011 before switching to Turkey because he said that the Turkish facilities were better.

To win the 200m, Guliyev beat favourites Wayde van Niekerk of South Africa and Isaac Makwala of Botswana. “This is not a shock,” he was widely quoted as saying. “But it does not feel real.”

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was quick to congratulate Guliyev.

“I would like to note that for the first time, an Azerbaijani athlete becomes the world champion in athletics,” media quoted him as saying. “It is gratifying that you raised the flags of Azerbaijan and Turkey following your victory. It shows that you are a patriot devoted to your people.”

Tajikistan’s Andrey Abduvaliyev is the only athlete competing for a Central Asia or South Caucasus state to become World Champion. He won Gold the hammer twice, in Stuttgart in 1993 and in Gothenburg in 1995.

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(News report from Issue No. 339, published on Aug. 13 2017)

Azerbaijan’s CB keeps interest rates steady

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AUG. 1 2017 (The Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank kept its key interest rate at 15% saying that it had seen some improvements in key economic indicators over the past few months. Specifically, it said that growth in the non-oil sector had been 5.4% in the first half of the year, 3.7% increase in trade volumes and 2.2% increase in agriculture. The Central Bank said, though, that inflation remained a concern.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on Aug. 5 2017)

Azerbaijan jails blogger

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JULY 20 2017 (The Bulletin) — A court in Baku sentenced Russian- Israeli travel blogger Alexander Lapshin to three years in prison for illegally entering Nagorno-Karabakh in 2011 and 2012 and for criticising Azerbaijan’s continued claim over the Armenian rebel-controlled area. The severity of the sentence surprised onlookers who had expected Lapshin to be freed under an amnesty. Belarus extradited Lapshin to Azerbaijan in February.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Azerbaijan jails opposition member

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JULY 24 2017 (The Bulletin) — A court in Baku sentenced Faiq Amirli, a member of the opposition Popular Front for Azerbaijan and the financial director of the Azadliq newspaper to three years and three months in jail for inciting religious hatred after he was arrested in 2016 and accused of holding books authored by exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen. Turkey has accused Mr Gulen of trying to organise a coup last year and has pressured its neighbours into arresting and deporting his supporters.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Azerbaijani firm wins construction tender

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JULY 24 2017 (The Bulletin) — Azerbaijani construction company Akkord has won a $70m road building contract in the Astana region run by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), media reported. The IBRD is linked to the World Bank and is funding a series of projects in the region to improve infrastructure.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Azerbaijan boycotts Yandex Taxi and Uber JV

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TBILISI, JULY 17 2017 (The Bulletin) — NewCo, a joint-venture between ride sharing companies Uber and Yandex Taxi in the former Soviet Union, ran into trouble within four days of its unveiling when Azerbaijan said it would boycott it because of its Armenian CEO.

The statement from the Baku Transport Agency is a reminder of how politics and business are closely entwined in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

“For this reason, after the unification of Yandex Taxi and Uber companies, if this structure is to be headed by an Armenian citizen or a person of Armenian origin, drivers of Baku will be called on to cease communication with this company,” a spokesman for the agency was quoted by Armenian media as saying. NewCo has “ appointed Armenian Tigran Khudaverdiyan, head of Yandex Taxi, as its CEO.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are still officially at war over Nagorno- Karabakh. A shaky UN-negotiated ceasefire has maintained a peace since 1994 but analysts have been warning that tension is rising with sporadic outbursts of violence and shelling intensifying.

Four days earlier Uber and Yandex Taxi agreed to merge their operations in Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Uber owns a 36.6% stake in the company and Yandex Taxi owns a 59.3% stake with the final 4.1% company,” being owned by management.

In a statement on the merger, Mr Khudaverdiyan, still formerly head of Yandex Taxi until the merger is completed by the end of 2017, said on July 13 that the new company currently services 35m rides every month, is growing at 400% per year and has a paper value of $3.725b.

“This combination greatly enhances Yandex’s ability to offer better quality service to our riders and drivers, to quickly expand our services to new regions, and to build a sustainable business,” he said.

Yandex Taxi and Uber dominate the ride-hailing market in the former Soviet Union. Their nearest rival, Gett, holds roughly 15% of the market.

Market analysts welcomed the ” move. Roman Luzgin, an analyst for investment website Seeking Alpha, said: “As the NewCo will account for more than 70% of the ride-on- demand market, the advantage of the monopolistic position will appear once the deal is executed.”

NewsCo will keep both brands operational. On the New York Stock Exchange shares in Yandex, best known as the Russian-language version of Google, rose to $31 from $27 after the news.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Azerbaijan arrests spy ring

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JULY 20 2017 (The Bulletin) — Azerbaijani security officers said that they had arrested and broken up a spy ring involving six people. Reports said that the spy ring was uncovered when one of the men was arrested at a border trying to smuggle out data on computers.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Azerbaijan’s President hands out apartments to journalists

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JULY 22 2017 (The Bulletin) — Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said that he would hand out free flats to 255 journalists, a move that his detractors have said is nothing short of a bribe. Mr Aliyev previously gave out apartments to pro-regime journalists in 2013. Media freedom watchdogs have described Azerbaijan as one of the worst countries in the world for media freedom.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

94% of creditors support restructure plan says International Bank of Azerbaijan

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JULY 18 2017 (The Bulletin) — More than 94% of International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) creditors supported a debt restructuring scheme, the bank said. It made the statement a few days after saying that it had won approval to go through with a controversial scheme that will see creditors lose 20% of their $3.3b investments. IBA said in May that it needed to restructure its debts.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Analysts warn of Azerbaijan- Armenia war

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JULY 5 2017 (The Bulletin) — Azerbaijan and Armenia are drifting towards war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, analysts warned after a shell killed a grandmother and her grandchild on the Azerbaijani side of the conflict. Azerbaijan accused the Armenian side of shelling civilians. Armenia-backed rebels said that Azerbaijan had deployed weapons deliberately close to civilians. Commentators have been warning throughout the year that tension in the region is close to triggering another major outbreak of violence. This last exploded in April 2016.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)