MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The EBRD said it extended a $39.5m credit line to Majid Al Futtaim, the regional franchisee of French retailer Carrefour, to extend its presence in Georgia. Carrefour already has three stores in Georgia and said it wants to open new ones. Carrefour is also present in Armenia, where it owns one store, Tajikistan and also in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan and Russia held a massive military exercise, media reported, a show of force towards an increasingly aggressive Taliban. According to reports, the military exercise was the biggest ever held in Tajikistan. Russia and its allies have become increasingly wary of the Taliban spreading north.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A firefight between Tajik forces and militants on its southern border with Afghanistan killed at least two Tajik soldiers, media reported by quoting government officials. This was one of the most serious border clashes for some months and will worry governments in Central Asia. It is unclear if the militants were linked to the Taliban or if they were local smugglers.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – After completing a mission to Tajikistan, David Kaye, a UN Special Rapporteur, said that freedom of expression in the country was dire. Mr Kaye said that the authorities were using concerns over security as an excuse to crackdown on the media and political parties they didn’t like. “The security situation has been used as a pretext, as an excuse, to crack down on freedom of expression,” he said.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Norway’s parliament challenged the Tajik government to reveal exactly who was the real beneficiary behind the TALCO aluminium smelter company. Newspaper reports have focused on potential corruption at the plant and in deals that included Norway’s part-state owned Norsk Hydro.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in the Tajik town of Isfara jailed three men to up to 11 years in prison for offences linked to their memberships of the now banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). The Tajik authorities banned the IRPT, the country’s only real opposition party last year, and has since been imprisoning its members. The West has criticised this as a crackdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are among the three most dependent countries on US aid to pay for their military, the eurasianet.org website reported by quoting a Washington lobby group. In 2014, Georgia received $158m of US military aid, out of a total budget of $387m; Tajikistan received $29m of US aid out of $104m in total and Kyrgyzstan received $90m out of a total military budget of $252m.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – General Raheel Sharif, Pakistan’s military chief, made his first trip to Tajikistan, pledging his full support for defeating terrorism in the region. This is important as it shows the growing bonds between Central and South Asia. Tajikistan is part of the CASA-1000 plan to generate electricity in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which is then exported to Pakistan, via Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A parliamentary committee in Norway opened an investigation into alleged corruption by state-owned aluminium producer Norsk Hydro in Tajikistan, the second probe in the last six months into bribery against a Norwegian government-owned company working in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.
Specifically, the Norwegian parliament now wants to see Hydro’s contract with Tajikistan’s state-owned aluminium plant TALCO. It challenged the notoriously secretive TALCO, the biggest industrial asset in Tajikistan, to reveal who its true beneficial owners are. Many believe that, via a network of offshore companies, it is Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and his family.
Media quoted Jette Christensen, MP and a member of the committee, as saying: “We and the minister must find out who are the hidden owners, therefore this is an order to both Hydro and the minister. We also believe that we must see the entire contract Hydro had with TALCO Management Ltd.”
TALCO Management Ltd., the shell company for TALCO, is registered in the British Virgin Islands and is seen by many observers as a safe haven for corrupt practices.
Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv wrote an in-depth story about the Hydro-TALCO case in mid- February, an article that appears to have triggered parliament’s renewed interest deals between the two companies between 1993 and 2003.
Hydro have denied the allegations and sent a 17-page reply to parliament. “There are no indications of Hydro having acted in violation of applicable laws, internal rules or guidelines,” Dag Mejdell, Hydro’s chairman, said in the statement.
“The company has zero tolerance towards corruption.”
The Norwegian government owns a 34.3% stake in Norsk Hydro.
In November 2015, Norway’s minister of industry sacked Svein Aaser, chairman of Telenor, a telecoms company under investigation for corruption in Uzbekistan in 2007/8 linked to payments for 3G licences. The investigation is ongoing.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 3 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s senate approved a request from a small town in the east of the country to be renamed Rakhmonabod, after President Emomali Rakhmon, as a thank you for his prompt aid after a flood in 2015. Villagers of Pitovdasht, in the mountainous Gorno-Badakhsan region, officially applied for the name change last September.
Residents said they wanted this to be a symbol of gratitude for Mr Rakhmon, president of Tajikistan since the mid-1990s, who fulfilled his promise of building 82 new homes after the flooding.
In July 2015, the region was hit hard by floods after glaciers melted and over 10,000 people had to be resettled.
Observers have said the town’s name change lies somewhere between genuine gratitude and the president’s cult of personality.
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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)