JAN. 17 (The Conway Bulletin) — State-owned Kazakhstan Engineering signed a deal with Russian Helicopters, also state-owned, to assemble helicopters at its plant in Astana. Specifically, Kazakhstan Engineering will assemble the Mil Mi-8AMT/Mi-171 helicopter which has a number of uses from ferrying cargo, to operations with the security services.
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019
JAN. 9 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that 47 Kazakh citizens had been rescued from Syria where he said they had been tricked into travelling and held as prisoners. Hundreds of Kazakh men have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight for the IS extremist group over the past few years. They often persuaded their wives and children to join them. Of the 47 people that Mr Nazarbayev said had been rescued, 30 were children.
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019
MOSCOW+ALMATY/JAN. 11 (The Conway Bulletin) — — A court in Moscow approved the extradition of Kazakh businessman Zhomart Ertaev to Kazakhstan where he is wanted on charges of defrauding Bank RBK of $160m.
Mr Ertaev, who denies the allegations, had tried to claim asylum in Russia because he said that he would not receive a fair trial in Kazakhstan. Special forces police detained him in May in a high-profile swoop on his motorcade outside the Moskva-Citi business centre.
The extradition of Mr Ertaev highlights increased cooperation between the Russian and the Kazakh law enforcement agencies in tracking down and extraditing businessmen wanted for various frauds. It also represents a change of heart by Russian officials who, in October had declined to extradite him.
Previously, Moscow had been viewed by wealthy Kazakhs fleeing from Kazakhstan as a useful stage post. Mukhtar Ablyazov, Kazakhstan’s most high-profile fugitive and President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s number one enemy fled to London via Moscow in 2008/9.
Mr Ertaev’s had left Kazakhstan in around 2009 after being released from detention. He had been tried for defrauding Alliance Bank, where he was the chairman in 2002-7, but was released because the judge said there wasn’t enough evidence against him.
Since then he appears to have lived for at least part of the time in Moscow where he became a director at Alma-TV and also chairman of Troyka-D Bank.
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019
JAN. 17 (The Conway Bulletin) — A helicopter crashed as it took over from the upmarket Alatau spa resort on the outskirts of Almaty in southern Kazakhstan, killing the pilot, media reported. According to the reports, only the pilot was aboard the helicopter when it crashed. The Eurocopter 130 belonged to Sky Service, a private charter company, and had been due to fly to the Big Almaty Lake, a popular beauty spot.
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019
JAN. 17 (The Conway Bulletin) — New York-listed telecoms firm Veon which operates the Beeline brand appointed Evgeniy Nastradin to be the new CEO of its Kazakh operations. Mr Nastradin had previously been Beeline Kazakhstan’s COO. He replaces Aleksandr Komarov who moves to Veon’s brand in Ukraine, Kyivstar.
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019
ALMATY/JAN. 17 (The Conway Bulletin) — — A court in Almaty, the financial centre of Kazakhstan, found two men guilty of murdering Olympic bronze medallist figure skater Denis Ten last year when he caught them trying to steal the wing mirrors off his car.
Arman Kudaibergenov and Nurali Kiyasov were both given 18-year sentences and another woman, Zhanar Tolybayeva, was given a four-year sentence for failing to report the crime. Friends and family of Ten, though, have said that Tolybayeva should also be charged with murder. Some reports have said that she was the leader of the group; others that she was on look-out duty.
Earlier in the court hearing, Kudaibergenov had apologised to the family of Ten and said that they had had no intention of killing him.
“First of all, I would like to ask Denis’ parents and all the people of Kazakhstan to forgive me. I sincerely regret what happened,” he said. “We did not have any intention of killing. I just wanted to find money and chose to steal.”
The murder of the popular Ten, 25, shocked people in Almaty. He disturbed Kudaibergenov and Kiyasov trying to wrench the wing mirrors off his car when he came back from lunch with friends in the city centre on July 19 last year. He chased them when they tried to run away but one of the men stabbed Ten twice in his thigh, piercing his femoral artery.
After the murder, there were calls for the Kazakh interior minister to resign and allegations that the police were protecting petty criminals and profiting from an epidemic of petty crime in Almaty.
Ten, an ethnic Korean with angelic looks, was a Kazakh sports superstar and a household name in a country where tough boxers, weightlifters and wrestlers dominate. Ten won his bronze medal in figure skating at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Kazakhstan’s only medal.
Last year, Ten, who had struggled with injuries, competed for Kazakhstan in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, coming in at 27th place.
Ten had told the media that he planned to retire from figure skating and take up professional photography.
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019
ALMATY/JAN. 10 (The Conway Bulletin) — China has allowed 2,000 ethnic Kazakhs living in its western Xinjiang province to ditch their Chinese citizenship and move to Kazakhstan, media reported.
Previously, China has often resisted ethnic Kazakh attempts to move to Kazakhstan. Analysts said that the permissions to relocate were linked to increased concern in Beijing over how China’s internment policies towards Muslims living in the west of the country were being perceived.
Human rights groups have said that tens of thousands of people, mainly Uyghur but also other Muslim monitories, have been interned at re-education camps in Xinjiang that are little more than prisons. The Chinese authorities have said this is a misrepresentation.
AP reported that the Kazakh foreign ministry had confirmed that 2,000 ethnic Kazakhs were relocating from western China to Kazakhstan. The Chinese government has not commented.
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>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019
DEC. 27 (The Conway Bulletin) — Car sales in Kazakhstan increased by 25.7% between January and November in 2018 compared to the same period in 2018, industry groups said. The data is more evidence that Kazakh consumers are gaining confidence after an economic downturn in 2015-17 triggered by a collapse in oil prices and recession in Russia. Of the 52, 467 cars sold during this period, nearly half were built in Kazakhstan.
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>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019
JAN. 1 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ethnic tension spiked in the central Kazakh city of Karaganda after a Kazakh man was allegedly stabbed to death in a bar by a group of Armenians. Less than a week later on Jan. 6, a couple of hundred angry Kazakh protesters gathered outside the regional police HQ to demand the police find the murderer.
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>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019
ALMATY/DEC. 28 (The Conway Bulletin) — A fortnight after Swedish-Finnish telecoms company Telia exited Kazakhstan, its Stockholm-based rival Tele2 said it was also going to sell its stake in Altel, its joint-venture with Kazakhtelecom.
Tele2 said an option in its joint-venture agreement with state-owned Kazakhtelecom allowed it to sell its 49% stake in Altel and that it expected the deal to be concluded in six months.
“The transaction between Kazakhtelecom, Telia Company and Fintur announced on Dec. 12, in which Kazakhtelecom acquires control of Kcell, triggers the possibility for Tele2 to exercise its put option and sell its shares in the JV to Kazakhtelecom, as the JV agreement includes customary non-compete clauses,” Tele2 said in a statement.
“To initiate this process, Tele2 has today filed a put option notice to Kazakhtelecom.” Tele2’s exit means there will be no major involvement by Western companies in the Kazakh telecoms sector.
Telia, and Fintur its Netherlands-registered JV with Turkcell, had been keen to quit Central Asia since a corruption scandal centred on its Uzbek operations earned it a fine of $1b in 2017 but Tele2 had given no indication that it wanted to quit too. Tele2 had merged its Kazakh operations, which it set up in 2010, with Altel in March 2016.
In October, Tele2 CEO Allison Kirkby had said in Q3 results that Altel “continues its tremendous journey”.
Industry website telecompaper.com said the decision to sell was linked to Tele2’s strategy to concentrate on markets in Europe.
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>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019