Tag Archives: Azerbaijan

Sweden drops Telia bribery case in Azerbaijan

MAY 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in Sweden dropped an investigation into alleged bribe paying by TeliaSonera, now called Telia Company, in Azerbaijan, relieving the pressure on the Nordic region’s biggest telecoms company but disappointing corporate governance campaigners.

Scrapping the investigation also ditches a potentially embarrassing public hearing for Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his family into their personal affairs. TeliaSonera was alleged to have paid millions of dollars indirectly to Mr Aliyev and his family for access to Azerbaijan in 2008.

Prosecutors said they could neither prove the bribery allegations nor Telia’s intent.

Allegations of the payment emerged in mid-2014, nearly two years after TeliaSonera was accused of paying a $375 million bribe to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, for access to Uzbekistan.

“With the tools we have at our disposal, we can’t prove bribery,” Gunnar Stetler, Sweden’s prosecutor, told Reuters in an interview.

Telia said the ruling marked another departure from the company’s more murky past.

“After today’s decision, there are no ongoing Swedish investigations that relate to Telia Company, except for the investigation regarding Uzbekistan,” Telia said in a statement.

Telia is linked to investigations in Sweden, the Netherlands, the US, Switzerland and Norway into alleged corruption linked to Ucell, its subsidiary in Uzbekistan.

Last September, Telia said it wanted to sell off its assets in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Turkish telecoms company Turkcell, in which Telia owns a stake, said it was interested in buying some of these companies.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Azerbaijan not to increase electricity tariffs, says S&P

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – International ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said that it doesn’t expect the Azerbaijani government to raise tariffs on electricity for fear of social unrest. S&P downgraded the state-owned electricity distributor, Azerenergy, from a rating of BB+ to BB, saying it would need a government bailout to pay back its debts.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Azerbaijan lifts loan ban

MAY 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s government lifted a month-long ban on foreign currency loans, official media reported. The country’s Financial Markets Supervisory Authority, which acts as a regulator, had forbidden banks from granting loans denominated in foreign currency on April 5 to try and strengthen the local manat currency.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Non-performing loans in Azerbaijan rise

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – International ratings agency Moody’s said that the proportion of loans deemed non-performing in Azerbaijan had reached 20%, a sign of the country’s poor economic health.

Moody’s said that data clearly shows the growth of non-performing loans in Azerbaijan. At the end of 2014, the proportion of non-performing loans in Azerbaijan had been 4.5%. This rose to 9.1% by the end of the third quarter of 2015 and has doubled, again, in the past six months.

Non-performing loans are credits that banks have been unable to collect for over 90 days. Analysts deem this timeframe a problem because when a loan is not repaid within three months it is likely that it will not be repaid at all.

Moody’s downgraded Azerbaijan’s economy, giving it a negative outlook and predicting problems collecting outstanding loans.

“The manat devaluation triggered a flight out of local currency deposits, led to a rise in banks’ problem loans, and eroded capital buffers,” it said in a statement.

Azerbaijan’s economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas which has collapsed in value since August 2014. The Central Bank devalued the manat currency twice last year. It ended the year at half the value it had started 2015 at.

Moody’s said this has had a negative impact on both economic activity and the banking sector.

“Azerbaijan’s economic growth outlook remains weak,” Moody’s said. “Moody’s recently revised its 2016 growth forecast for Azerbaijan, expecting real GDP to shrink by 3.3%, compared to a previous forecast contraction of 0.7%, reflecting its expectation of a contraction in both the oil/gas and non-oil/gas GDP sectors.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Ex-Kazakh CBank chief buys bank stake

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Grigory Marchenko, former chief of Kazakhstan’s Central Bank, bought an 8.3% stake in AGBank, a private bank in Azerbaijan. Chingiz Asadullayev, the bank’s chairman, increased his stake to 31.7%, up from 23.3%. The World Bank’s International Financial Corporation decreased its stake from 17.5% to 4.3%. Mr Marchenko left his post at Kazakhstan’s Central Bank in October 2013. Since leaving the role, Mr Marchenko has kept a low profile.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Azerbaijan’s oil exports drop

APRIL 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Oil exports from Azerbaijan’s state- owned energy company SOCAR shrank by 10% in 2015 compared to 2014. In 2015, SOCAR exported 22.1m tonnes of oil, out of total country exports of 35.2m tonnes. Its share of Azerbaijan’s oil exports also fell from 70% in 2014 to 63% last year.

ENDS