MARCH 5 2015 (The Bulletin) – Two senior officials in the Tbilisi government, Reno Chakhava, head of the mayor’s office, and his deputy, Mariam Shelegia, have resigned over continued allegations of corruption and bribe-taking, media reported. The resignations throw the most powerful civic council in Georgia into disarray.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
MARCH 6 2015 (The Bulletin) – At a Senate hearing in Astana, chairman of the ministry of finance’s revenue committee, Daulet Yergozhin, said the country was going to impose new measures against off-shoring cash.
This is important — if new legislation actually appears — as the issue of Kazakhstan’s wealthy getting their cash out of the country while poorer sections of the population suffer during an economic downturn could turn political.
A study published last month by Alexander Cooley and Jason Sharman, two academics, analysed the channels through which the Kazakh elite amassed “spectacular fortunes” in Western financial centres.
Mr Yergozhin wasn’t responding to these accusations. Instead he said Kazakhstan was working with Switzerland and Liechtenstein to reduce the flow of capital out of the country.
“Already this year, we are planning to put barriers against the movement of capital [to offshore locations] and we will start seeing the results of this policy early next year,” media quoted him as saying.
Kazakhstan has been looking was to bring capital back into the country. Last year it introduced an amnesty for people which repatriated cash. It has said that this amnesty has so far attracted $1b back into Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)
FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The French authorities have seized properties worth millions of euros belonging to Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, media reported. One of the properties was an estate near Paris which had its own opera house. Ms Karimova, once a potential presidential successor, is under house arrest in Tashkent.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Kazakhstan convicted the former head of the anti-monopoly commission, Murat Ospanov, of corruption and ordered him to pay a $6m fine. Government prosecutors had wanted an 11-year jail sentence. Kazakhstan has prosecuted several government officials in an aggressive anti-corruption campaign over the past year.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
FEB. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Georgian interior ministry said it arrested Jokia Bodokia, a senior official in the Tbilisi city government, for taking a bribe. PM Irakli Garibashvili has said that he wants to make wiping out corruption a priority. Opposition said he is using the purge to attack his enemies.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
JAN. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Global Fund, a Switzerland-based health organisation, said corrupt suppliers had swindled $5m from an HIV/AIDS awareness project in Kazakhstan. The corruption highlights the extent of the problems facing foreign companies and organisations in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 217, published on Feb. 4 2015
JAN. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Foreign investment in Uzbekistan is again under the spotlight after Russian news agency Regnum quoted the British ambassador in Tashkent, George Edgar, saying that companies were having to quit the country because of various problems with the business environment.
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(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)
JAN. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Washington-based Heritage Foundation said that weak rule of law in Kazakhstan had supressed its position in its global rankings on economic freedom. In this year’s ranking, Kazakhstan dropped six places to 69th in the list of 178 countries.
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(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)
JAN. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — An anonymous whistle-blower in Norway has alleged corruption at Vimpelcom, a telecoms company a third owned by Norwegian Telenor, media reported. Telenor and Vimpelcom deny the allegations. Uzbekistan’s telecoms sector is already mired in an alleged corruption case.
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(News report from Issue No. 215, published on Jan. 21 2015)
JAN. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Kazakh court extended the pre-trial house arrest of former PM Serik Akhmetov. Mr Akhmetov, who was arrested in November and accused of corruption, was Kazakh PM between Sept. 2012 and April 2014. His fall from grace highlights the fragile nature of power in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)