MARCH 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will launch new rules by end-2015 aimed at stemming the flow of cash from businesses to offshore accounts, media quoted the head of analysis at the Kazakh financial police, Olzhas Bektenov, as saying. Kazakhstan has been under pressure to tighten its anti-money laundering regulations.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Pavlodar, north Kazakhstan, jailed four Kazakhs who had trained with Islamic radicals in Syria, media reported. The Kazakhs were arrested in Turkey after crossing from Syria. Governments in Central Asia and the South Caucasus are increasingly concerned about people becoming radicalised in Syria.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kyrgyz government has drawn up a six year plan to improve its aviation safety, media reported. Media quoted Erkin Isakov, head of the civil aviation authority, listing the problems. “Insufficient funding, low professional level of staff, employee turnover, discrepancy in standards, as well as an imperfect legal framework,” Mr Iskaov was quoted as saying.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a decision that provoked international condemnation from human rights groups, a court in Azerbaijan sent two opposition leaders to jail for organising illegal demonstration.
Human rights groups accused the court of being politically motivated, a charge they have used against Azerbaijan’s judiciary often over the last few years.
The US State Department backs up this analysis. Earlier this year in its annual global human rights assessment, it said that the authorities were increasingly persecuting opposition groups.
A court spokesman said that Tofig Yagublu, deputy head of the opposition Musavat party, and Ilgar Mammadov, leader of the Republican Alternative human rights group, were sentenced to five and seven years in prison.
Police arrested them in February 2013 and accused them of organising unrest in the town of Ismailli in January 2013. The unrest in Ismailli, 200km northwest of Baku, was the worst during President Ilham Aliyev’s 11 years in power.
Giorgi Gogia, senior researcher in the South Caucasus for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, wrote a withering analysis of the verdicts.
“Another day, another imprisonment of prominent government critics in Azerbaijan,” he said.
“Instead of looking into the underlying causes of such an expression of mass rage and there are many, starting with astounding government corruption the authorities decided to find convenient scapegoats who fit the false narrative of critics-as-enemies.”
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan is fast becoming a pariah state for businesses.
The US authorities opened corruption investigations into business conducted by Russia’s Vimpelom and Swedish-Finnish TeliaSonera in Uzbekistan, shortly after Swiss authorities announced they were looking into money laundering allegations against Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbek president Isam Karimov.
It’s not a pretty picture. Vimpelcom and TeliaSonera also have registered offices in the Netherlands, where the authorities have also launched investigations.
The trigger for these problems was a $330m deal that TeliaSonera struck with Gibraltar-registered Takilant to buy a 3G licence in 2007. Takilant was officially owned by Gayane Avakyan, an associate of Ms Karimova.
A Swedish investigation has been looking into whether this payment was actually a bribe to the Karimov family. Mr Karimov and his family have run Uzbekistan as their personal fiefdom since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. They may also have had personal stakes in Uzbekistan’s big businesses.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s parliament voted in a new anticorruption law, although in reality it is little more than window dressing.
The law basically states that civil servants are restricted from private business and opening foreign bank accounts. The thinking is, it seems, that government officials are prone to corruption temptations. Perhaps by banning officials from private business, the government hopes to look pro-active in defeating corruption.
It has a long way to go. Corruption is rife in Turkmenistan, as the US-based Heritage Foundation noted in its global report on economies in 2014.
“Corruption is widespread, with public officials often forced to bribe their way into their positions,” the Heritage Foundation wrote on Turkmenistan.
Out of the 178 countries it ranked, the Heritage Foundation placed Turkmenistan at the bottom for both “property rights” and “freedom from corruption”.
Passing legislation is one thing but acting on it is another.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov has passed a decree which stated that he had to give permission for the top 25 ranked officials in the government to go on overseas trips, media reported. The decree is not designed to save money, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, but to safeguard state secrets.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan wants to impose harsher penalties on people who break its anti-terrorism laws, media quoted the head of the Azerbaijani parliament’s security committee, Ziyafat Asgarov, as saying. Azerbaijani officials have said they are worried about radicalised Islamists returning to Azerbaijan from Syria’s civil war.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Underling Tajikistan’s authoritarian instinct, police arrested the lawyer of jailed opposition leader Zaid Saidov, media reported. Fakhriddin Zokirov, the lawyer who represented Sadiov last year in his corruption case, is accused of forging documents and theft.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan was due to implement a new law that combats corruption. The law, passed last week by Turkmenistan’s parliament, makes it illegal for civil servants to open foreign bank accounts. Corruption is considered rife in Turkmenistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)