FEB. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – US hotel group Hilton opened its first hotel in Armenia, giving the Armenian economy a boost. The Doubletree brand is one of Hilton’s top mainstream brand. The 176-room hotel is aimed at both tourists and business people, Hilton said in a press statement.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
FEB. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian telecoms operator VimpelCom said it would pay a $795m settlement to resolve US and Dutch lawsuits focused on bribes it paid to top Uzbek officials in the late 2000s, a deal that highlights corruption by foreign telecoms companies in Uzbekistan.
The court settlement against VimpelCom is one of the largest settlements linked to bribery in US corporate history.
VimpelCom is majority owned by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman but is headquatered in Amsterdam and is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Telenor, the Norwegian telecoms company, also owns a 33% stake in VimpelCom.
Officials in the US and the Netherlands opened investigations against VimpelCom in 2014 for bribing Uzbek public officials to obtain a licence. The description of the corrupt official in the US court’s proceedings fits the profile of Gulnara Karimova, the president’s daughter, although her name is not explicitly mentioned.
The court said that, between 2006 and 2012, Unitel, VimpelCom’s subsidiary in Uzbekistan, paid $114m in bribes to operate in the country and to obtain 3G and 4G licences.
Two days before the settlement, VimpelCom released a report where it effectively admitted its guilt.
VimpelCom said it “would, among other things, acknowledge certain violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and relevant Dutch laws and pay fines.”
Following the settlement Jean Yves Charlier, the VipelCom CEO, said: “The wrongdoing, which we deeply regret, is unacceptable.”
VimpelCom uses the Beeline brand. In Central Asia, Beeline also operates in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
But VimpelCom is not alone in bribing its way into Uzbekistan’s mobile network. Swedish-Finnish telecoms company TeliaSonera has also admitted bribe paying in 2008 for access to Uzbekistan’s market.
For Uzbekistan, the telecoms corruption cases have confirmed widely perceived views that bribe paying is rampant and that, previously, major companies wanting to do business there had to deal with Ms Karimova. She was once thought of as a future president but has been under house arrest in Tashkent for two years.
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(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
FEB. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it is giving Kazavtozhol a $103m loan to widen an 80km stretch of road in southern Kazakhstan on the main south-north highway. The EBRD has been an important driver of infrastructure projects in former Soviet Central Asia since the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
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(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
FEB. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Taliban fighters damaged an electricity line running from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan’s northern regions, the second attack on Central Asian- Afghan infrastructure in the past month.
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and their various backers, have all invested millions of dollars in various infrastructure projects which involve Afghanistan and the attacks will worry them.
Local villagers in northern Afghanistan said the Taliban launched rockets and fired machine guns at a pylon, during a gun battle with government forces, running from Turkmenistan into the bordering Faryab province.
The Pajhwork news agency quoted a regional police chief as saying that Taliban fighters had “fired three rockets at the power pylon in Gorzad area. After they failed to hit the pylon, they opened machinegun fire at the transmission line and cut it.”
Analysts told The Conway Bulletin the Taliban were responsible for damaging the powerline, although they may not have been behind the attack on a line running from Uzbekistan last month.
Thomas Ruttig, director of the Afghanistan Analyst Network, said that the powerline may have been accidentally damaged during a gun- battle. “The Taliban have denied any role [in the disruption] and stated that they do not attack infrastructure that belong to The Nation,” he said.
The attacks, though, will worry Central Asian governments. Days before the latest attack, Turkmen- President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ordered an increase of security at construction sites for the TAPI gas pipeline, a project designed to pump Turkmen gas across Afghanistan to Pakistan and India.
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(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
FEB. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s government published a list of 89 state-owned companies that it said will sell at least 15% of their shares to foreign investors this year. Last December, the government approved a law that aimed to attract foreign investors. The long list of companies open for investment includes cotton industry giant O’zbekyengilsanoat, telecoms operator Uzbektelekom and Uzbekistan’s postal service.
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(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
FEB. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Canadian miner Stans Energy had filed a $220m law suit at the International Court of Arbitration for what it said was the illegal confiscation of rights it held to mine the Kutessay-2 rare earth elements (REE) field and Kalesay beryllium field in Kyrgyzstan. The Kyrgyz authorities have previously said that it confiscated Stans Energy’s rights over the fields in 2011 because it had broken its contract to develop the sites.
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(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
FEB. 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will lower its oil export duty in March, Yerbolat Dossayev, minister of economy, said. He said the export duty will now be lowered to $30/tonne from $40/tonne. Mr Dossayev also said that the export tax would be scrapped altogether if the price of oil falls below $25/barrel. Oil producers in Kazakhstan have stopped producing oil because of high export taxes and low prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
FEB. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Swedish high street retailer H&M said that it has banned its suppliers since December from using cotton sourced from Turkmenistan in any of their products after allegations that the Turkmen authorities use child labour to pick the harvests. H&M, and other retailers, have previously banned suppliers from sourcing cotton from Uzbekistan for similar reasons. Campaigners accused IKEA of using cotton from Turkmenistan in its various products
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(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
FEB. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – French technology company Thales signed 2m euro deal to upgrade Georgia’s radar systems. The deal means that Thales will inspect and maintain Georgia’s three main aviation radars over the next five years.
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(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)
FEB. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Georgian government will import extra electricity from Russia to send on to the breakaway Abkhazia region in a short-term deal, media reported. Abkhazia is wholly reliant on the Enguri hydropower plant for its electricity but water levels have reached a critically low level meaning that there have been a series of power outages. The deal shows that despite vicious territorial disputes, Georgia, its breakaway republics and Russia can still pull deals together.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 268, published on Feb. 19 2016)