Tag Archives: corruption

Trump marred in property scandal with Kazakhs

OCT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Financial Times published a story connecting US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, through a series of property deals, to a Kazakh family accused of money laundering.

In the story, the FT said Mr Trump was involved in a a 2006 property deal with Trump Towers Soho in New York and a company called Bayrock, linked to Viktor Khrapunov.

Mr Khrapunov is a former mayor of Almaty, who is now exiled in Switzerland. Earlier this year, prosecutors in Kazakhstan said they wanted Mr Khrapunov sent back to Kazakhstan to face charges of money laundering. Mr Kharpunov has said he is being hounded because of his opposition to President Nurtulan Nazarbayev.

Neither Mr Trump nor Mr Khrapunov have commented on the FT story.

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(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)

ITF bannes corrupt Uzbek officials

SEPT. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The International Tennis Federation banned for life two Uzbek officials for betting offences. The two officials, Sherzod Hasanov and Arkhip Molotyagin,communicated via mobile phone the scores of games they were officiating to a third party, before recording them into the official electronic score- board, allowing illegal betting.

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(News report from Issue No. 296, published on Sept. 16 2016)

Russia sparks diplomatic row with Armenia

AUG. 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Russian foreign ministry complained to both Armenia and the US over the brief detention of its citizen, Sergei Mironov, in Armenia at the request of the US. Mr Mironov, 30, on the US wanted list for money laundering and illegal arms export, was arrested in Armenia on Aug. 26. The Armenian court refused to bring him to trial and released him days later. On Aug. 31, Mr Mironov fled to Russia. The episode risks straining relations between Armenia and Russia.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Russia’s MTS sells Uzbek business

AUG. 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian mobile phone operator MTS, which is listed on the New York stock exchange, said it had sold its business in Uzbekistan to the Uzbek government. The US authorities have been investigating alleged corruption at MTS’s Uzbek operations. MTS owned a 50% stake in UMS, the country’s third largest mobile operator. Various governments have launched a series of investigations into corruption by mobile operators in Uzbekistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Uzbek authorities fire prosecutor

JULY 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — One Uzbek prosecutor was fired and the head of a local police station in Tashkent is also being questioned in an investigation over an alleged fraudulent pyramid scheme master- minded by businessman Akhmad Tursunbayev. Mr Tursunbayev was arrested in mid-June for having stolen money from people with the promise of a 100% return, Eurasianet reported. The investigators now claim that public officials may have been involved.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Amsterdam court orders seizure of assets linked to Uzbek President’s daughter

JULY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Amsterdam ordered the seizure of €123m ($135m) of assets linked to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, as part of an ongoing global investigation into bribes paid by major telecoms firms looking to enter the Uzbek market.

Gibraltar-registered Takilant, the company linked to Ms Karimova that took bribes to award telecoms licences in Uzbekistan, had its assets frozen in Sweden in 2012/13 in a related court case but this is the first time a Western court has directly confiscated them.

The Dutch ruling targeted cash that Amsterdam-based Russian telecoms operator VimpelCom and Sweden’s Telia Company paid Takilant between 2004 and 2013.

In its decision, the court said that Takilant demonstrated “a way of doing business that is socially extremely destabilising.”

The latest ruling aggravates a corruption scandal that has sunk Uzbekistan’s already weak reputation as a place for Western businesses to operate.

It also deals another blow to Ms Karimova’s profile in Uzbekistan, where the self-styled fashion designer and diplomat was once touted as a potential president. She has been under house arrest in Tashkent for two years and her associates are in prison for various financial crimes.

With the confiscation of Takilant’s assets, the courts start to close in on reclaiming some of the millions of dollars paid to Ms Karimova. Previously, courts had only managed to fine European telecoms companies for their illegal practices.

In February, a US court ruled that VimpelCom, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, was guilty of bribing Takilant and fined it $795m. Another US prosecutor is currently trying to freeze $550m of Takilant’s assets.

Sweden’s Telia has also said at it has put aside millions of dollars to pay fines linked to bribery charges.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Kazakhstan’s mobile operator posts Q2 revenues 15% down from 2015

ALMATY, JULY 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kcell, Kazakhstan’s largest mobile operator, said Q2 revenues were 15.3% lower than last year because of weak economic conditions and aggressive competition which have driven down prices.

Kcell’s Q2 revenues of 36.4b tenge ($107.7m) represented a slight improvement over the previous quarter, when it posted 35.6b tenge ($107), its worst quarter since an IPO in 2012. Importantly, however, Kcell said that its subscriber base is holding up through an economic downturn.

“In the second quarter we started to see some stabilisation in market prices and subscriber numbers,” the company’s CEO Arti Ots said in a statement.

Increased competition and the depreciation of the tenge currency against the US dollar over the past year have knocked revenues for mobile operators in Kazakhstan.

In April 2016, revenues for all mobile companies in Kazakhstan were down by 21% to 68b tenge ($204m) compared to the same period last year, according to government data.

Sweden’s Telia Company owns a 62% stake in Kcell. It has said that it wants to sell this stake because of reputational damage caused by a corruption probe into bribes it paid to enter the Uzbek market.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Kazakh officials arrest head of construction department

JULY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh anti-corruption agency ordered the arrest of Yerkin Bukharbayev, head of the construction department in the city of Shymkent, southern Kazakhstan. Mr Bukharbayev is accused of having embezzled public funds during a tender in 2013 to improve the flow of the Badam river which runs through the city. Bukharbayev and his associates allegedly stole 170m tenge ($1.1m at the time).

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Uzbek President’s daughter loses $300m

JULY 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dutch prosecutors asked a court in Amsterdam to confiscate €300m ($333m) from Gibraltar-registered Takilant, a company linked to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan’s president. Takilant allegedly received bribes in 2007/8 from Sweden’s Telia Company (then called TeliaSonera) and Russia’s VimpelCom to award mobile licenses in Uzbekistan. Dutch prosecutors asked the court to impose a €5m ($5.5) fine on Takilant and seize its 6% stake in Ucell, an Uzbek subsidiary of Telia Company. VimpelCom is registered in the Netherlands.

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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)

SFO to look into Kazakh ENRC

JULY 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The British government gave the Serious Frauds Office extra funding to complete its ongoing corruption investigation into ENRC, a Kazakh miner that quit the London Stock Exchange in 2013. The company is accused of having paid bribes to win contracts in Kazakhstan and Africa. Three prominent Kazakhstan-based businessmen, Alexander Mashkevich, Alijan Ibragimov and Patokh Chodiev, founded ENRC, now called Eurasian Resources Group.

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(News report from Issue No. 288, published on July 8 2016)