JUNE 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s government set a series of low price rates for energy generated from renewable resources, media reported, part of drive to increase the proportion of green power it uses. Kazakhstan has said it wants renewable energy usage to make up 40% of its power consumption by 2050.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – South Korean president Park Geun-hye started a six day trip to Central Asia by visiting Tashkent.
There Ms Guen-hye pledged to increase cooperation in gas and solar power sector.
This was just the first stage in an important Central Asia trip for the South Korean leader. Ms Guen-hye now travels to Astana and then to Ashgabat laying down a serious marker in the region.
Central Asia is a natural region for South Korea to look to carve out an overseas trade foothold. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ensured that this was the case.
In the 1930s, worried about their loyalty, Stalin moved hundreds of thousands of Koreans living in the east of the Soviet Union to Central Asia. Most settled around Tashkent or Almaty.
Now both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have large Korean minorities. Many ethnic Koreans are involved in business and some in politics. There are Korean restaurants in cities in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and transport links with Seoul are well-established.
Ms Geun-hye is looking to leverage these ties to ensure that South Korea is able to tap into the region’s energy reserves as well as putting Korean companies in a good position to do business.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Bread prices in Shymkent increased by around a third overnight to 50 tenge ($0.25) a loaf from 35 tenge, media reported. This is the second bread price spike in south Kazakhstan this year and it could spark protests. Regional government officials blamed bakeries for the price increase.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – South Korean president Park Geun-hye will visit Uzbekistan next week as part of a tour of Central Asia that also includes Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, media reported quoting an Uzbek government source. There are large Koran ethnic minorities living in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s financial police unit has calculated that around 290b tenge (roughly $1.6b) has been embezzled since the beginning of 2013.
Rather ironically the head of the unit, Marat Akhmetzhanov, gave this gloomy assessment of the endemic nature of corruption in Kazakhstan on the eve of a celebration — the 20th anniversary of the formation of the Kazakh financial police.
“In the past year and a half more than 15,000 offences were registered by the Agency,” he said. “Almost 400 cases were opened in the last 18 months against oil theft and smuggling.”
Still, people trying to embezzle cash are being caught and many of these are state officials.
Tursunbek Omurzakov, a member of parliament, said that corruption was rampant.
“Bribery has become the major obstacle to foreign investment,” he said.
Of course none of this is new. The real challenge for Kazakhstan is whether it is going to be able to do anything about it.
As Sarah Lain, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said schemes to embezzle money from businesses and to dodge tax in Kazakhstan had become relatively sophisticated.
“The use of complex networks of offshore companies, proxy owners, ‘fixers’ and offshore bank accounts is common practice amongst the higher echelons of the Kazakh business elite,” she said.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Four prisoners at a jail near Astana have slashed their stomachs with knives to protest against squalid living conditions and humiliating treatment from guards, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Human rights groups often cite poor prison conditions and the abuse of inmates as a major problem in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An appeals court in Atyrau upheld an earlier $730m fine against the consortium developing the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian for environmental damage. The fine was originally imposed for excessive gas flaring after an accident in September 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is enjoying a good run of chasing down his enemies in their overseas hideouts.
Austrian police detained Mr Nazrbayev’s former son-in- law, Rakhat Aliyev, in Vienna, a year after the authorities in France captured Mukhtar Ablyazov, the former chairman of BTA Bank.
Like Ablyazov, Mr Aliyev has been a vocal opponent of Mr Nazarbayev since he fled Kazakhstan in 2007.
Mr Nazarbayev is notorious for allowing his subordinates to enrich themselves but forbidding any challenge to his political powers. Mr Aliyev, who had been married to Mr Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, crossed this line and was forced into exile.
Reports said that he voluntarily turned himself in to the Austrian authorities. The question now is, will Austria extradite Aliyev to Kazakhstan this time?
It’s unlikely as reports have said that Austria has previously declined to act on an extradition request from Kazakhstan. This could be what Mr Aliyev wanted.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)
JUNE 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia accused Azerbaijan of killing two of its soldiers along the border of the disputed region of Nagorno- Karabakh, raising tension around one of the South Caucasus most delicately-balanced flash-points.
Shootouts are common between the two countries around Nagorno-Karabakh, where a barely discernible peace is held together by a fragile 1994 UN-negotiated cease-fire, but the heightened war-mongering rhetoric from Armenia alarmed international observers.
Azerbaijan denied the accusations.
Both sides are playing to their internal audience. The problem for Armenia is that the rhetoric has serious geopolitical implications.
It wants to join the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union which also counts Belarus and Kazakhstan as members. Armenia has the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Its dispute with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has, though, caused some consternation. Media reported that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev raised objections to Armenia’s membership because of its dispute over Nagorno- Karabakh a the signing ceremony last month.
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(News report from Issue No. 188, published on June 11 2014)
JUNE 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Replacing two corroding 90km-long gas pipelines at the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea will cost “several billion dollars” and delay the re-start of production until at least 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported quoting a person familiar with the project.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 188, published on JUNE 11 2014)