JUNE 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Plans have emerged to build an 88-storey complex in Astana, the Kazakh capital. Media reported that the Abu Dhabi Plaza will cost $1.1b to build and will be the tallest building in Central Asia. The plans show that there is still appetite for ambitious building projects in Astana.
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(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)
JUNE 21 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkish security forces extradited to Kazakhstan a Kazakh national wanted in connection with a series of explosions in the town of Atyrau on the Caspian Sea coast in 2011, media reported. Kazakhstan is trying to stem attacks liked to militant Islam. This extradition will be viewed as a success.
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(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)
JUNE 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The three Kazakh billionaire founders of London-listed ENRC — Alexander Machkevitch, Alijan Ibragimov and Patokh Chodiev — have prepared a new deal to privatise the metals and mining company, media reported. The deal is reported to be worth $4.7b and include a chunk of shares in Kazakh miner Kazakhmys.
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(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)
JUNE 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government’s plan to unite pension savings in one fund is looking vulnerable.
Unveiled in January, the plan had been greeted with a decidedly mixed reaction. The idea was to draw efficiencies from a single scheme and to create a fund worth roughly $20b to dip into during an economic recession.
Detractors of the plan, that would see 10 private pension schemes and one state-run pension scheme unified under the Central Bank, said it would be uncompetitive.
Kazakhstan had been the first post-Soviet country to encourage private pension schemes and many bankers considered ditching them tantamount to being a turn-coat.
Now Halyk Bank, which has the largest private pension scheme in Kazakhstan, has said it would rather sell off its pension scheme for cash by the end of 2013 than swap it for shares in nationalised bank BTA.
In March, Kazakhstan deputy PM, Kairat Kelimbetov said that the three biggest pension schemes would be offered shares in state-run bank BTA in exchange. BTA went bankrupt in 2009 during the global financial crisis.
BTA bank is still distressed and had to re-structure its $11b debt for the second time last year.
Halyk Bank’s opinion counts as it is the biggest bank in Kazakhstan by volume of cash lent.
The move to switch Kazakhstan’s pension scheme was always going meet resistance. This is likely to be an unsettling period for the Kazakh banking sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 140, published on June 24 2013)
JUNE 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Almaty began the trial of Alim Khasenov, a former deputy head of Kazakhstan’s border guards service, for corruption, media reported. The case highlights endemic official corruption in Kazakhstan and problems at its border guards service. Mr Khasenov is charged with stealing $2m.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s ministry of agriculture has declared a state of emergency in two small areas near the border with China to cull cattle infected with foot-and-mouth disease, media reported. Roughly 2,275 infected cows have been killed already this year. Outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease occur annually in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a meeting in Tashkent, Uzbek President Islam Karimov and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev called for the UN to investigate the potential environmental impact of proposed dams in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Water is a sensitive subject in Central Asia and can aggravate inter-country relations.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan intends to maintain a ban on US citizens adopting Kazakh infants, Raissa Sher, head of the commission for children’s rights at the Kazakh education ministry told media. The ban has been in place since July 2012 when two Kazakh orphans were found apparently abandoned in a care home in the US.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In their hunt for former billionaire banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, the Kazakh authorities haven’t had it all their own way.
Ablyazov is the former chairman of BTA Bank who fled Kazakhstan after the collapse of the bank, one of the country’s biggest, in 2009. The Kazakh authorities accuse him of embezzling billions of dollars, plotting a series of bomb attacks in Almaty and trying to topple the government. He is currently on the run.
Many of Ablyazov’s former associates have been arrested recently, including Yerlan Tatishev, a former BTA Bank director. In May, the Kazakh security services secured the extradition from Italy of Ablyazov’s wife and daughter.
Now though, they’ve suffered a setback. A judge in the Polish regional town of Lublin rejected a request from Kazakhstan to extradite Muratbek Ketebayev, an associate of Ablyazov. Polish police detained him on June 13. The judge freed him two days later.
Mr Ketebayev had been a Kazakh deputy economy minister before fleeing Kazakhstan to Poland. Like Ablyazov, the Kazakh authorities have accused him of trying to overthrow the government.
According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Polish prosecutor released Mr Ketebayev because he felt the extradition request was politically motivated.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
JUNE 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government wants to modernise its pension system. Among other things this means making women work five years longer until they are 63, in line with men.
The logic appears simple but the issue has hit a nerve and triggered a rare show of ground-level dissent.
But, if the public dissent was rare, the government’s climb-down has been little short of extraordinary.
On June 11 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, ever watchful for an opportunity to flourish his man-of-the-people credentials, sacked labour minister Serik Abdenov who had been charged with pushing through the pension reforms.
Mr Abdenov had cut an increasingly forlorn and isolated figure. Audiences have openly laughed at him, he has stumbled over his words when trying to explain the reforms and a protester has pelted him with eggs.
But the climb-down didn’t stop there.
Mr Nazarbayev has also said that the entire pension reform needs to be looked at once again and suggested that the changes should come into effect in 2018 and not in 2014. Since Mr Nazarbayev’s intervention state-influenced media have been putting out stories suggesting that the pension reforms have gone too far.
In Kazakhstan, this is code for a rare government U-turn.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)