Tag Archives: international relations

The Ablyazov saga between Italy and Kazakhstan continues

JULY 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh authorities’ hunt for opposition leader Mukhtar Ablyazov has taken a distinctly geo-political twist.

On July 12, a court in Italy ruled that the Italian authorities had illegally detained and extradited to Kazakhstan Alma Shalabayeva, wife of Ablyazov, and their daughter. They had been living for several months in a villa outside Rome when armed, masked men detained them in a night raid at the end of May. Two days later they were on a plane back to Kazakhstan. Most standard procedures, the government has now said, were ignored.

Italy’s interior minister, Angelino Alfano, is suspected of ordering the extradition, although he has denied this.

Mr Alfano, the interior minister, is a close ally of Italy’s former PM Silvio Berlusconi who is often described as a friend of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Ablyazov is wanted in Kazakhstan for allegedly embezzling billions of dollars from BTA Bank, where he had been chairman before fleeing in 2009, and financing opposition forces. He is also on the run from British police for perjury.

Regardless of the row that has erupted in Italy, Ablyazov is still on the run. Until he is captured the Kazakh authorities will both pull in more favours across the globe and continue to pressure opponents at home.

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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Kazakh government accused of torture

JULY 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human rights lobby group Amnesty International released a report accusing the Kazakh government of using torture on prisoners. The report focused on people detained during the 2011 clashes between protesters and police in Zhanaozen, west Kazakhstan. The Kazakh government has previously refuted allegations of torture.

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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Statoil to restart project in Azerbaijan

JULY 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Norwegian energy company Statoil wants to re-start exploration at the Zafar-Mashal oil and gas bloc in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, media reported. The Zafar-Mashal bloc has been mothballed since the mid-2000s when ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips withdrew from the field because it was commercially unviable.

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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Iran upset by Georgia’s visa regime

JULY 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Politicians in Iran have warned Georgia that its decision to scrap visa-free travel for Iranians will damage bilateral ties, media reported. Iran and Georgia have been developing increasingly close relations since 2010, including establishing a direct flight between Tehran and Tbilisi and visa-free travel.

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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Turkmenistan to send gas to Afghanistan

JULY 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In Ashgabat, Turkmen officials agreed a deal to sell gas to Afghanistan. The deal is an important step for the planned TAPI pipeline which will feed gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. Successful completion of TAPI would cement Turkmenistan’s place as a major global gas supplier.

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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Survey reveals police corruption in Kazakhstan

JULY 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Kazakhstan have vowed to improve the reputation and effectiveness of the police. They have introduced fitness and aptitude tests and prosecuted various senior police officers for bribe taking.

According to a new survey by the Berlin-based NGO Transparency International (TI), though, they have a long way to go.

In TI’s annual Global Corruption Barometer, more than half of the Kazakh interviewees said they had a paid a bribe to the police in the past year.

Of course there were other services that also rated poorly for bribe taking, including so-called land services, medical services, the judiciary and education. In each case over a quarter of the respondents said they had paid a bribe but illegal payments to the police were noticeably worse.

Perhaps more worrying for the Kazakh authorities was the answer to the question on whether interviewees felt corruption had gotten worse or better over the past year. Nearly 35% answered that corruption in Kazakhstan had worsened in the past 12 months compared with 21% who said it had improved.

For their global corruption barometer, TI surveyed 1,000 people in each of 107 countries between September 2012 and March this year. The results are by no means definitive but, for Kazakhstan at least, they do make for an interesting, and important, snapshot.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Italy rules Ablyazov’s wife extradition to Kazakhstan illegal

JULY 12 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Italy ruled that the extradition to Kazakhstan of the wife of former Kazakh banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, Alma Shalabayeva, from Rome in May was illegal. Questions have been asked about the relationship between Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Italian officials who sanctioned the extradition.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Survey says corruption in Azerbaijan is waning

JULY 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijanis, apparently, feel that the government is their best defence against corruption in the public sector.

In a new global corruption survey Transparency International asked roughly 1,000 people in Azerbaijan between September 2012 and March 2013 for their impression of official corruption.

The results were, broadly, positive. Of the interviewees, 41% said that corruption amongst officials was improving in Azerbaijan, 32% said it was roughly staying the same and 27% said it was getting worse.

Georgia, by contrast though, has been the region’s standard bearer for combating corruption and 70% of respondents in the Transparency International survey said that official corruption had decreased.

Back in Azerbaijan, nearly 60% of respondents thought corruption was a serious problem in the public sector but 70% also said government action was reasonably effective in dealing with this vice.

The institutions that respondents thought were most corrupt were the judiciary, medical services and the police. In each case over 40% of respondents thought these institutions were corrupt.

It may just be a snapshot but Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer of Azerbaijan provides an interesting psychological insight.

(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Russia and Azerbaijan restart a pipeline

JULY 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan state energy company SOCAR and Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft are negotiating on re-starting oil shipments along the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, media reported.

This is probably more significant for Azerbaijan-Russia relations than to energy supplies.

With construction finished in 1997, the Baku- Novorossiysk pipeline was one of the early post-Soviet Union pipelines. It runs 1,330km from Baku to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. From there the oil is shipped on to Europe. Volumes along the route, though, have been declining as Azerbaijan has worked to open up alternative routes to Europe, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

Last year, the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline pumped only about 8% of Azerbaijan’s oil to its export markets.

In May 2013, throughput along the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline stopped altogether. Both sides were losing money on the deal. There wasn’t enough volume for the Russians and the price for its oil was too low for the Azerbaijanis.

It may be economically more efficient for the pipeline to stay idle but politically it needs to re-open.

Russia has approved a major arms deal with Azerbaijan, executives from Rosneft, the Russian state energy company, have visited Baku and senior Russian politicians have talked about a strategic deal between the two countries.

Re-starting an oil pipeline between the two countries may fit the pattern of increasingly close cooperation.

(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)

Gulnara quits role of Uzbek envoy

JULY 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, quit her role as Uzbekistan’s envoy to the UN in Geneva. Ms Karimova, who has been at the centre of business bribery allegations, said she wanted to concentrate on Uzbekistan, triggering speculation over her succession ambitions.

(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)