SEPT. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia handed over Erlan Kosaev, a former BTA Bank official wanted in connection with fraud, to Kazakhstan for prosecution. Mr Kosaev was a colleague of Mukhtar Ablyazov, who is currently in a French jail. Kazakhstan wants to extradite Mr Ablyazov although rights groups have said that he wouldn’t face a fair trial.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
SEPT. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – It looks like the Kazakh president’s office is becoming more commercially-minded.
Media reported that it has trademarked the Akorda, or the presidential palace, and a handful of other buildings in Astana.
One of the trade-marked images of the blue-domed Akorda show the sun rising behind it, rays of light shining over its roof.
It’s unclear, currently, just what the presidential administration plan to do with the trademark other than boost the image of the building itself.
The Akorda, which means White Horde, was built in 200 and lies at the centre of Astana, the city at the focus of President Nazarbayev’s vision for Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
SEPT. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s deputy energy minister, Uzakbai Karabalin, has said fuel shortage will continue despite government attempts to buy extra petrol from Azerbaijan and other neighbours, media reported. He said a third of Kazakhstan’s petrol came from Russia which was dealing with an economic slowdown.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept. 17 2014)
SEPT. 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An opinion poll in Kazakhstan said that a third of people don’t believe various high profile government campaigns to reduce corruption will have any impact, media reported. Most of the respondents said corruption is too ingrained in the system to be rooted out.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept. 17 2014)
SEPT. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – KazPost, the Kazakh Post Office, will not close hundreds of rural branches as it had said it would do earlier this year, KazPost chairman Bagdat Musin told media. There had been a outcry when KazPost had said it wanted to close branches, which deliver a spectrum of services, to cut costs.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
SEPT. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan plans to launch three more high-speed train routes by the end of this year, part of a programme to upgrade infrastructure. Media quoted the press service of Temir Zholy, the Kazakh train company, saying the upgraded routes would be Astana-Kyzlorda, Astana-Ust Kamenogorsk and Almaty- Ust Kamenogorsk.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
SEPT. 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The message was clear.
In front of a coarse sign with a line running through it showing two stickmen having gay sex beside the warning “Homosexualism is a threat to the nation”, Kazakh politician Dauren Babamuratov, leader of a small nationalist faction in parliament, called on the government to ban gay men from holding various positions in parliament. He also claimed that blood samples could determine the sexual orientation of a person.
“I think it is very easy to identify a gay person by his or her DNA,” he said according to media.
“A blood test can show the presence of degeneratism in a person.”
His comments will find support in Kazakhstan where anti-homosexual sentiment is running high.
Last month a poster for an Almaty gay club depicting Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and Kazakh composer Kurmangazy Sagyrbayuly sparked an uproar.
There have been moves in Kazakhstan to introduce the type of laws that Russian already has in place that bans the discussion of homosexuality in schools.
Attitudes towards homosexuality in Kazakhstan have improved over the past few years. A handful of gay friendly bars have popped up but the homosexual community is still wary of flaunting itself too publicly.
Earlier this year, The Conway Bulletin carried a report from outside a nightclub in Almaty that described verbal abuse being hurled at people standing in the queue to enter the club.
Relatively, though, Almaty is the most liberal city for gay rights in Central Asia. Homosexuals from across the region tend to migrate to Almaty to work and live as there is a degree of tolerance. In most other cities in the region, homosexuals are often beaten in the street.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
SEPT. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s deputy General- Prosecutor Andrei Kravchenko has said he wants CCTV installed more widely in public areas, media reported. Kazakhstan is increasingly worried about home- grown Islamic extremists and may be looking for ways to monitor them.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
CHOLPON-ATA/Kyrgyzstan, SEPT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In front of a packed hippodrome in this provincial town of shores of the mountain-ringed Lake Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan A beat Kyrgyzstan B to win gold in the main event of Kok-Boru at this inaugural Nomadic Games.
Amid the enthusiastic roars of local Kyrgyz, foreign diplomats cheered on half-heartedly between snipes about graft and the hippodrome’s overloaded portaloos.
While the World Nomadic Games was designed to unite all countries of the Turkic-speaking world, it retained a very local flavour throughout, with the hosts cruising to victory in the medal table — the majority of the competitors were Kyrgyz — and poor planning abounding. None of the presidents of the competing states — Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — showed up as hoped before the games began.
The Kok-Boru on July 14 was spectacular, however. Exhibition games of Kok-Boru, a polo-like game played with a dried goat carcass, are common at tourist-focussed festivals throughout the country. This one was far more competitive, with the captain of Kyrgyzstan’s A team sporting a battle-inflicted gash across his forehead as he lead his team to victory over the B team.
Russia’s federal Altai Republic and Turkey claimed silver and bronze in the event respectively. Following a reported disagreement over the rules of Kok-Boru — or Kokpar to the Kazakhs — neighbouring Kazakhstan refused to send a team.
Also on Sept. 14, to the chuckles of local spectators, horses belonging to former Prime Minister Omurbek Babanov claimed the bronze and silver medals for the 2.5 km flat race. Babanov’s weakness for stallions is legendary.
He was jettisoned from the government amid rumours he had accepted a racehorse a bribe for securing a foreign investment for a Turkish businessmen in 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)
SEPT. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Plans to increase the amount of capital held by Kazakh banks won’t solve all its structural weaknesses, the Standard & Poor’s ratings agency said in a new report.
The Kazakh Central Bank has been trying to work out just how to improve its banking system ever since the global financial crisis of 2008/9 toppled three of the biggest banks. Only government takeovers saved the Kazakh banking system. Most recently the Central Bank said that from Jan. 1 2019, banks would have to hold a minimum of 100b tenge (roughly $550m), a ten-fold increase from the current requirements.
But although the increase in capitalisation requirements may force various mergers in the system and rid it of the smaller, more fragile, banks, the Kazakh Central Bank also needs to address serious structural weaknesses, Standards & Poors said.
“Although consolidation could create opportunities for the Kazakh banking sector over the long term, the system’s major weaknesses–the lenient banking regulation and supervision, banks’ aggressive risk management practices, and sometimes deficient corporate governance procedures are very likely to remain,” the report said.
And the move may even backfire.
“Furthermore, the resulting higher barriers to entry could lower the sector’s attractiveness to foreign investors,” Stand & Poors said.
There are currently 38 banks in Kazakhstan. Of these, 35, it has been estimated, would fail a move to a capitalisation of 100b tenge.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)