Tag Archives: corruption

Azerbaijani President fires communications minister

NOV. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev fired his long-serving communications minister Ali Abbasov, the second sacking of a government minister in two months.

Mr Aliyev has generally preferred to keep people in key positions for years, so the sackings have created an unusual sense of instability around the Azerbaijani government.

Mr Abbasov had been communications minister for over 11 years.

The presidential press service announced the sacking through an online statement. No reason was given for the sacking although shortly afterwards police arrested 10 senior officials in the communications ministry and charged them with corruption.

The pattern is similar to the sacking last month of national security minister Eldar Mahmudov. He had also been in the job since 2004. Similarly, after Mr Mahmudov was sacked, police arrested several senior officials in the national security ministry for corruption.

Azerbaijan is routinely criticised for its corruption levels but it is unusual for the state to purge its own ranks for alleged graft and even more unusual for an internal investigation to trigger ministerial sackings.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)

Tajikistan reports on transparency in mining sector

OCT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an intergovernmental organisation set up to improve transparency in mining and oil sectors, published its first report on Tajikistan which the authors said shone some light on the murky Tajik extractive sector.

Anti-corruption lobby groups have previously criticised the Tajik government for siphoning off cash from its metals sector and while the report was considered a step forward for transparency in Tajikistan, there were still many blank spots.

And the authors of the report made this clear.

“Three of the 14 companies in the EITI Report are partially state owned. Considerable details related to these companies are missing from the report due to the currently weak government systems for recording all company payments,” they wrote in the EITI report.

Tajikistan had been supposed to present its first report to the EITI in February, a deadline it missed.

A presentation on the report will be made in Dushanbe on Nov. 25.

ENDS

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

Norway police arrests Ex-VimpelCom CEO over Uzbek bribes

NOV. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Norway arrested Jo Lunder, the former CEO of Russian telecoms company VimpelCom, in connection with alleged bribe paying in Uzbekistan, further damaging the reputation of foreign telecoms companies operating in Central Asia.

A few days earlier, Norway’s industry minister, Monica Maeland, sacked Svein Aaser as Telenor’s chairman over the corruption probe. She said that Telenor had been handling an internal investigation into the case badly.

“I no longer have confidence in Telenor’s chairman,” Ms Maeland said in a statement.

VimpelCom is alleged to have paid millions of dollars in bribes to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of President Islam Karimov, for mobile licences in Uzbekistan. Swedish TeliaSonera is also being investigated for bribe-paying.

In October, Telenor said it wanted to sell its 33% stake in VimpelCom, effectively cutting the company’s operations in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

ENDS

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

OECD criticises Uzbek graft

NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Corruption is still rife in Uzbekistan despite the introduction of the country’s first anti-corruption plan earlier this year and a so called anti-corruption coordination commission, the OECD said in a new report.

In its report, the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said that Uzbekistan needs to criminalise corruption and promote public sector honesty and integrity.

Corruption and bribery are considered deeply embedded in Uzbekistan. The OECD, an intergovernmental organisation, report is evidence that little has changed despite some headline policies.

In effect, the OECD, said that Uzbekistan’s new laws were window dressing.

In its exhaustive 116 page report, the OECD said that Uzbekistan needed to focus on a handful of key policies if it was committed to beating corruption.

These involved conducting anti- corruption surveys regularly and publishing the results; improving the independence and integrity of the law enforcement agencies; developing e- government tools.

ENDS

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

Ex-Kyrgyz President publishes memoirs

OCT. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s exiled former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev published an autobiography of his time in office, a move that will irritate the Kyrgyz leadership. Mr Bakiyev presented his book in Belarus, where he fled after a revolution in 2010. Kyrgyzstan has tried unsuccessfully to extradite Mr Bakiyev to face various corruption charges.

ENDS

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

ENDS

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

Kazakh fugitive Ablyazov is set for Russia

OCT. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – French PM Manuel Valls ordered Kazakh fugitive Mukhtar Ablyazov to be extradited to Russia to face fraud charges. French police arrested Ablyazov in a villa on the south coast in 2013. He had been on the run since being found guilty of contempt of court in London in 2012. He fled Kazakhstan in 2009 after being accused of stealing $6b from BTA Bank. Kazakhstan wants him extradited to face charges of trying to organise a coup.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)

Uzbekistan places general under house arrest

OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Uzbekistan have placed a senior general under house arrest after allegations of corruption were levied against him by Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, media reported.

If Ms Karimova is the source of the allegations it shows that she may still hold influence in Uzbekistan where she has been held under house arrest since March 2014.

The story also shows just how deep the extent of corruption in Uzbekistan is.

The interned general is Hayot Sharifhojayev, who oversaw the corruption investigation into Ms Karimova and her associates, giving her plenty of motive for revenge.

According to a report published by the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Gen. Sharifhojayev was arrested in July and has now been placed under house arrest.

The report said that he had been caught trying to sell assets which he had confiscated from Ms Karimova, although it didn’t specify what exactly he was trying to sell.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)

Comment: Georgia needs to stop the political persecutions

OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The imprisonment of a former mayor of Tbilisi from the opposition United National Movement (UNM) has underscored fears that Georgia’s governing Georgian Dream (GD) is using the judiciary to settle scores.

Gigi Ugulava’s conviction came just after the Constitutional Court ruled that holding him 14 months in pre-trial detention was unconstitutional and set him free. Twenty-four hours later a court convicted him of using his position to give out hundreds of jobs to UNM loyalists and sentenced him to 4.5 years.

A former youth leader representing the “new guard” that brought Mikheil Saakashvilli to power after the Rose Revolution, Ugulava entered the mayor’s office before he turned 30. After the GD’s victory in parliamentary elections in 2012, he was forced from office in December 2013 amid accusations of misuse of funds.

The conviction of Ugulava is a harsh blow to the UNM in advance of the pivotal October 2016 parliamentary elections, a repeat of the 2012 contest that toppled Saakashvilli and eventually led to his leaving the country and his citizenship rather than face criminal charges.

Like a number of UNM officials, Saakashvilli is now plying his reformism for the new Western darling Ukraine, where he is now governor of Odessa.

Saakashvilli’s energetic reformism in Georgia produced massive overhauls in public administration and policing that are still considered among the best in the non-Baltic former Soviet Union.

But his centralization of power and demonisation of opponents, including through Ugulava’s position as head of the capital’s administration, eventually sparked the Georgian Dream backlash.

Georgia is grappling with the problem common across Eurasia of how to consolidate rule of law after a transition in government.

Uprooting corruption may well require prosecuting former officials, but it is hard to escape the sense that GD is repaying UNM its own repression in kind, rather than building a common polity where diverse parties can compete without fear of persecution if they lose or fall out with the ruling elite.

The cycle of accumulation, revolution, and persecution appears on track to continue which is bad news for Georgian democracy.

By NateSchekkan, programme director at Freedom House

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Georgian opposition TV channel nears closure

OCT. 2 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s main opposition TV channel Rustavi2 said it will have to stop broadcasting within days unless it finds more cash quickly after a court seized a controlling stake in the company.

The court blocked the sale of the 51% stake to a relative of a former defence minister, a sale that had been considered vital to keep Rustavi2 afloat after an earlier decision linked to a row with a former shareholder handed control of the TV channel’s assets to the authorities.

At a press conference at the TV channel’s HQ in Tbilisi, Rustavi2 director Nika Gvaramia said that its closure was imminent.

“The current government, lead by Ivanishvili promises democracy, but they have finally done what they have wanted to do for the past four years — shut Rustavi2 down,” he said.

Bidzina Ivanishvili is Georgia’s richest man and architect of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition.

Since winning a parliamentary election in 2012 and a presidential election a year later, Mr Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream have been trying to purge Georgia of remnants of former president Mikheil Saakashvili and his allies.

And analysts said that Rustavi2, one of only three main TV channels, has long been in his sights.

Maia Mikashavidze, a Tbilisi-based professor of mass communication, said Rustavi2 is considered one of the few voices critical of the current government and that the decision by the court to block the sale of the stake did carry a political undertone.

“Rustavi2’s operations are seriously threatened and may stall any time because the station is short of cash because of insufficient ad sales,” Ms Mikashavidze said.

“This limits access to alternative views and facts for a huge numbers of viewers who rely on Rustavi2 for that service.”

In Kutaisi, hundreds of people rallied in front of parliament to demand that the government take action to protect Rustavi2.

The US government, which has previously criticised Mr Ivanishvili and his supporters for their excessive zeal in prosecuting people and companies linked to Mr Saakashvili, said that it was concerned about the case.

“We do not like to see any kind of limitation on this pluralistic media environment.” US Ambassador Ian Kelley said in a statement.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)