AUG. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Germany arrested Akhat Alpysbayev, the Consul-General at Kazakhstan’s consulate in Frankfurt, and a more junior Kazakh diplomat for smuggling cigarettes into the country, German newspaper Bild reported. The arrests will embarrass Kazakhstan which has been professionalising its diplomatic service.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Unknown assailants attacked and beat Igor Larra, a reporter who has written stories critical of government officials in the city of Aktobe, west Kazakhstan, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said. The attack raises questions, again, of journalists’ safety in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 149, published on Aug. 26 2013)
AUG. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Showing off its global sporting ambitions, Kazakhstan has registered Almaty with the International Olympic Committee as a potential candidate to host the 2022 Winter Games, AP reported. Almaty hosted the Asian Winter Games in 2011. It previously failed in a bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.
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(News report from Issue No. 149, published on Aug. 26 2013)
AUG. 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court sentenced six radical Islamists to up to 10 years in jail for plotting attacks against senior officials. Kazakhstan has been trying to quell a surge in attacks linked to radical Islamists over the past three years. Reports said the group plotted suicide attacks on major public buildings.
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(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)
AUG. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Kyrgyzstan uncovered an illegal pipeline pumping vodka into the country from neighbouring Kazakhstan, media reported. The discovery of the pipeline under the river Chu, which separates the two countries, highlights Central Asia’s entrenched smuggling networks and thirst for hard alcohol.
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(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)
AUG. 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rompetrol, a subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s state-owned Kazmunaigas, will open 22 new petrol stations in Georgia by the end of 2014, media reported. This shows that Kazmunaigas is continuing to use Rompetrol to expand overseas and also that it believes that demand for petrol in Georgia is growing. Rompetrol already operates 70 petrol stations in Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)
AUG. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged France not to extradite former Kazakh banker Mukhtar Ablyazov to Kazakhstan where he is wanted on various charges including stealing billions of dollars and plotting a series of bomb attacks. HRW said Ablyazov was at risk of ill-treatment. French police arrested Ablyazov earlier this month.
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(News report from Issue No. 147, published on Aug. 12 2013)
AUG. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an interview with the FT, Umirzak Shukeyev, chairman of Kazakhstan’s $80b sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna, said he wanted to streamline the organisation and improve corporate governance standards. Over the past few years, Kazakh companies have attracted increased criticism on governance issues.
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(News report from Issue No. 147, published on Aug. 12 2013)
AUG. 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shakhtar Karagandy may be unknown across the football world but it has broken new ground for Kazakhstan. The team from the industrial city of Karagandy has become the first football club in Kazakhstan to qualify for either the UEFA Champions League or the UEFA Europa League.
Just two games, against Scotland’s Celtic on Aug. 20 and Aug. 28, now stand between the players of Shakhtar Karagandy and the glitz, glamour and riches of Europe’s top tier football.
Even if they lose against Celtic, they are still guaranteed a place in the group stages of Europe’s second tier competition.
For Kazakh football, this is a milestone. Kazakhstan is the only Central Asian country to play in UEFA, the European sector of world football, but it has failed to make any serious impact.
Now the unglamorous team from Karagandy, shakhtar means miner in Russian, has changed that. It beat FC Bate, a relatively experienced team from Belarus, 2-0 over two matches and then defeated Armenia’s FC Skenderbeu 5-3 over another two matches.
Win or lose against Celtic, Shakhtar Karagandy and Kazakhstan are finally set for a European football adventure.
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(News report from Issue No. 147, published on Aug. 12 2013)
AUG. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — So, in the end, he hadn’t gotten very far. After nearly 18 months, police found the 50-year-old Mukhtar Ablyazov hiding in a luxury villa near Cannes on France’s sun drenched southern coast.
Kazakh prosecutors want to charge Ablyazov with trying to overthrow President Nursultan Nazarbayev and planning a series of bomb attacks in Almaty. He had moved to London to escape the Kazakh authorities but has been on the run since fleeing a court that convicted him of perjury. That was back in February 2012 during Ablyazov’s protracted case with BTA Bank, the Kazakh bank he used to be chair, which had accused him of embezzling billions.
Now Kazakhstan needs to work out how to get Ablyazov back to face prosecutors.
The problem for Mr Nazarbayev is that France can’t extradite him directly because Kazakhstan is not a member of the Council of Europe’s Extradition Convention.
This could have been a problem except, conveniently, Ukraine, which is a member of the extradition convention, has issued an extradition request for Ablayzov to face fraud charges. From Kiev, Ablyazov could then be sent on to Kazakhstan.
It promises to be a protracted extradition battle with human rights groups already warning the French government that Ablyazov is unlikely to get a fair hearing.
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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)