Tag Archives: corruption

Kazakh fugitive Ablyazov is set for Russia

OCT. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – French PM Manuel Valls ordered Kazakh fugitive Mukhtar Ablyazov to be extradited to Russia to face fraud charges. French police arrested Ablyazov in a villa on the south coast in 2013. He had been on the run since being found guilty of contempt of court in London in 2012. He fled Kazakhstan in 2009 after being accused of stealing $6b from BTA Bank. Kazakhstan wants him extradited to face charges of trying to organise a coup.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)

Uzbekistan places general under house arrest

OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Uzbekistan have placed a senior general under house arrest after allegations of corruption were levied against him by Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, media reported.

If Ms Karimova is the source of the allegations it shows that she may still hold influence in Uzbekistan where she has been held under house arrest since March 2014.

The story also shows just how deep the extent of corruption in Uzbekistan is.

The interned general is Hayot Sharifhojayev, who oversaw the corruption investigation into Ms Karimova and her associates, giving her plenty of motive for revenge.

According to a report published by the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Gen. Sharifhojayev was arrested in July and has now been placed under house arrest.

The report said that he had been caught trying to sell assets which he had confiscated from Ms Karimova, although it didn’t specify what exactly he was trying to sell.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)

Comment: Georgia needs to stop the political persecutions

OCT. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The imprisonment of a former mayor of Tbilisi from the opposition United National Movement (UNM) has underscored fears that Georgia’s governing Georgian Dream (GD) is using the judiciary to settle scores.

Gigi Ugulava’s conviction came just after the Constitutional Court ruled that holding him 14 months in pre-trial detention was unconstitutional and set him free. Twenty-four hours later a court convicted him of using his position to give out hundreds of jobs to UNM loyalists and sentenced him to 4.5 years.

A former youth leader representing the “new guard” that brought Mikheil Saakashvilli to power after the Rose Revolution, Ugulava entered the mayor’s office before he turned 30. After the GD’s victory in parliamentary elections in 2012, he was forced from office in December 2013 amid accusations of misuse of funds.

The conviction of Ugulava is a harsh blow to the UNM in advance of the pivotal October 2016 parliamentary elections, a repeat of the 2012 contest that toppled Saakashvilli and eventually led to his leaving the country and his citizenship rather than face criminal charges.

Like a number of UNM officials, Saakashvilli is now plying his reformism for the new Western darling Ukraine, where he is now governor of Odessa.

Saakashvilli’s energetic reformism in Georgia produced massive overhauls in public administration and policing that are still considered among the best in the non-Baltic former Soviet Union.

But his centralization of power and demonisation of opponents, including through Ugulava’s position as head of the capital’s administration, eventually sparked the Georgian Dream backlash.

Georgia is grappling with the problem common across Eurasia of how to consolidate rule of law after a transition in government.

Uprooting corruption may well require prosecuting former officials, but it is hard to escape the sense that GD is repaying UNM its own repression in kind, rather than building a common polity where diverse parties can compete without fear of persecution if they lose or fall out with the ruling elite.

The cycle of accumulation, revolution, and persecution appears on track to continue which is bad news for Georgian democracy.

By NateSchekkan, programme director at Freedom House

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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Georgian opposition TV channel nears closure

OCT. 2 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s main opposition TV channel Rustavi2 said it will have to stop broadcasting within days unless it finds more cash quickly after a court seized a controlling stake in the company.

The court blocked the sale of the 51% stake to a relative of a former defence minister, a sale that had been considered vital to keep Rustavi2 afloat after an earlier decision linked to a row with a former shareholder handed control of the TV channel’s assets to the authorities.

At a press conference at the TV channel’s HQ in Tbilisi, Rustavi2 director Nika Gvaramia said that its closure was imminent.

“The current government, lead by Ivanishvili promises democracy, but they have finally done what they have wanted to do for the past four years — shut Rustavi2 down,” he said.

Bidzina Ivanishvili is Georgia’s richest man and architect of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition.

Since winning a parliamentary election in 2012 and a presidential election a year later, Mr Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream have been trying to purge Georgia of remnants of former president Mikheil Saakashvili and his allies.

And analysts said that Rustavi2, one of only three main TV channels, has long been in his sights.

Maia Mikashavidze, a Tbilisi-based professor of mass communication, said Rustavi2 is considered one of the few voices critical of the current government and that the decision by the court to block the sale of the stake did carry a political undertone.

“Rustavi2’s operations are seriously threatened and may stall any time because the station is short of cash because of insufficient ad sales,” Ms Mikashavidze said.

“This limits access to alternative views and facts for a huge numbers of viewers who rely on Rustavi2 for that service.”

In Kutaisi, hundreds of people rallied in front of parliament to demand that the government take action to protect Rustavi2.

The US government, which has previously criticised Mr Ivanishvili and his supporters for their excessive zeal in prosecuting people and companies linked to Mr Saakashvili, said that it was concerned about the case.

“We do not like to see any kind of limitation on this pluralistic media environment.” US Ambassador Ian Kelley said in a statement.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Uzbek corruption probe undermines TeliaSonera

SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TeliaSonera last week sounded its retreat from Central Asia after trying to fight back against allegations of corruption and bribery made against its companies in the region over the past three years.

It’s a humbling moment for Telia- Sonera, the Stockholm-based mobile operator, that once had ambitions to dominate the South Caucasus and Central Asia region.

The company which has most undermined TeliaSonera’s reputation and made its position untenable was Ucell, its Uzbek subsidiary.

Prosecutors across Europe and in the US have launched investigations into alleged bribes of up to $325m that TeliaSoneria may have paid a Gibraltar-based company in 2007 and 2008

to access the Uzbek mobile phone market. The Gibraltar company was called Takilant and was closely linked to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

And if the allegations have been TeliaSonera’s undoing, they have also undermined Ms Karimova,

Once touted as a near-certain to replace her father, she is now under house arrest in Tashkent. Most of her allies are in jail and her assets in Europe have been seized.

When TeliaSonera does finally offload its Uzbek subsidiary it will have left an indelible mark on Uzbekistan’s history — in the mobile phone market, in corporate governance and in politics.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Georgia jails former mayor

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The day after winning a case against the Georgian government for keeping him in pre-trial detention for 14 months, Gigi Ugulava was found guilty of misspending public funds when he was the mayor of Tbilisi. He was jailed for 4-1⁄2 years. Separately, a judge acquitted Ugulava of money laundering.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Azerbaijani sets fire to himself as protest

SEPT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A taxi driver from Sumqayit, in western Azerbaijan, has died after setting himself on fire, media reported, an apparent final desperate protest against bully by officials and corruption.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said this was the seventh immolation in Azerbaijan since 2014.

Immolations in the region are a particularly sensitive issue because of the political connotations. The so-called Arab Spring erupted after an immolation by a frustrated and brow- beaten market seller set himself alight in front of a local government building in a provincial town in Tunisia in 2010.

The Arab Spring spread across North Africa, fuelling popular protests which eventually toppled governments in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

It also worried Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and some analysts have said that he started cracking down on opposition figures and media outlets after the Arab Spring undermined some of his allies.

The dead taxi driver was named as 27-year-old Maqsad Suleymanov. The authorities in Sumqayit did not specify how he died but a mass of social media comments and eyewitness reports said he had set himself on fire.

Kazakhstan investigates drowning

SEPT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh authorities have launched an investigation into the drowning of four soldiers last week during an amphibious exercise on the Caspian Sea shore, media reported. Kazakhstan has pledged to improve and modernise its military. Like other armies in the former Soviet Union, allegations of corruption and bullying plague its armed forces.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Mobile operator TeliaSonera wants to sell C.Asia & S.Caucasus assets

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TeliaSonera, the Swedish telecoms company, wants to sell its stakes in mobile phone companies across the Central Asia and South Caucasus region after a series of high-profile corruption and bribery allegations dragged down its operations.

The Stockholm-based company owns stakes in Azercell, Geocell, Ucell, Kcell and Tcell and analysts said that any telecoms company looking to pick up a bargain may be able to buy its assets cheaply.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

US says graft is a problem in Armenia

SEPT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the US Ambassador to Armenia, Richard Mills, said that corruption was still a major problem in the country. Mr Mills said that some progress had been made but that it was holding back the Armenian economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)