Tag Archives: international relations

Kazakhstan continues hunt for opposition figures

JUNE 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In their hunt for former billionaire banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, the Kazakh authorities haven’t had it all their own way.

Ablyazov is the former chairman of BTA Bank who fled Kazakhstan after the collapse of the bank, one of the country’s biggest, in 2009. The Kazakh authorities accuse him of embezzling billions of dollars, plotting a series of bomb attacks in Almaty and trying to topple the government. He is currently on the run.

Many of Ablyazov’s former associates have been arrested recently, including Yerlan Tatishev, a former BTA Bank director. In May, the Kazakh security services secured the extradition from Italy of Ablyazov’s wife and daughter.

Now though, they’ve suffered a setback. A judge in the Polish regional town of Lublin rejected a request from Kazakhstan to extradite Muratbek Ketebayev, an associate of Ablyazov. Polish police detained him on June 13. The judge freed him two days later.

Mr Ketebayev had been a Kazakh deputy economy minister before fleeing Kazakhstan to Poland. Like Ablyazov, the Kazakh authorities have accused him of trying to overthrow the government.

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Polish prosecutor released Mr Ketebayev because he felt the extradition request was politically motivated.

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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)

HRW warns of deportations to Kyrgyzstan

JUNE 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch (HRW) said three Uzbek men Kyrgyzstan wanted extradited from Russia may be tortured if they are handed over to the Kyrgyz authorities. The Kyrgyz authorities want to question the men over their roles in ethnic fighting in the south of the country in June 2010.

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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)

FDI increase in Georgia

JUNE 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Foreign investment in Georgia, an important resource for the country, increased in Q1 2013 to $226m from $181m in Q4 2012, data from the national statistics agency showed. Reuters has previously reported that political fighting between President Mikheil Saakashvili and PM Bidzina Ivanishvili was deterring investors.

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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)

UK minister visits Uzbekistan

JUNE 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In another sign of Uzbekistan’s growing acceptance by the West, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a British government minister, visited Tashkent for talks. The West had previously shunned Uzbekistan for human rights abuses but they have now smoothed over relations as they need help Uzbek support to withdraw military equipment from Afghanistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)

Azerbaijan’s central banker accused of corruption

JUNE 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Bloomberg News reported that Austrian prosecutors have accused nine bankers in Austria of bribing foreign bankers, including Adib Mayaleh, head of the Azerbaijani Central Bank. Mr Mayaleh denied he had taken a bribe. He has never been charged with corruption.

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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)

Instability hits investments in Georgia

JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Political fighting between Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his main rival PM Bidzina Ivanishvili has dented foreign investment in Georgia, Reuters reported by quoting several foreign businessmen and official statistics.

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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)

100 Kazakh radicals training in Afghanistan

JUNE 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Nurtai Abykayev, the 76-year-old head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence agencies, is experienced, calculating and a close confident of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

He would have weighed up the implications of telling a group of journalists on the sidelines of a meeting in Kazan, Russia, of intelligence chiefs from across the former Soviet Union that there were an estimated 100 Kazakhs training in militant camps in southern Afghanistan.

What he wanted to gain by releasing this figure is still unclear. Does he consider this a small or large number? Certainly global attention on defeating radical Islam has re-focused on Central Asia since a pair of ethnic Chechen brothers with links to Kyrgyzstan bombed the Boston marathon in April.

Since 2011 Kazakhstan has been trying to quell its own Islamic militant insurgency. It has blamed a series of bomb attacks on radical Islamists and locked up several dozen young men with apparent links to these militant groups.

Mr Abykayev may also have been trying to warn of the perils that Central Asia faces from 2014 when NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan and the Taliban are able to roam north.

Russia has been constantly voicing concern about the threat from militants once the NATO soldiers leave. Mr Abykayev may be adding Kazakhstan’s voice to these concerns.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)

MTS sells its assets in Uzbekistan

JUNE 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Uzbek government announced that Russian mobile operator MTS was selling its assets in Uzbekistan for roughly $300m, media reported. Last year the Uzbek government accused MTS’s local subsidiary Uzdunrobita of tax dodging and suspended its operations. MTS said the allegations were false.

(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)

Western supermarket enters Armenia

YEREVAN/Armenia, JUNE 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Carrefour, the French supermarket brand famed for its aggressive discount model, was supposed to open its first branch in Armenia last December. It didn’t hit this target although it has established an office in Yerevan.

Rumours on just why Carrefour’s launch has been delayed, drift around the Armenian capital. Most of these suggest that local, well-connected businessmen who control the supermarkets in Armenia don’t want the competition and have called in a few favours to delay the opening.

Regardless, the delay is frustrating people.

“Carrefour is no angel,” Anna Kachatryan, a 40-year-old housewife, said. “But I think that we need this sort of company to establish themselves in Armenia.”

She wanted food prices to drop and thought that Carrefour would help do this.

Armen Safarya, 54, though, said that he worried that Carrefour would become the dominant supermarket in Armenia and would end up harming local producers by pushing down their fees.

“This is not the solution,” he said. “Carrefour will control the entire market and will make local producers suffer.”

Carrefour itself has not explained the delay in opening its first store in Yerevan, although it has insisted that one would open by the end of 2013.

(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)

Academic returns to Azerbaijan

JUNE 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Khalida Ismayilova, an Azerbaijani academic, and Shamkhal Huseynov, her driver, returned to Azerbaijan after weeks in Iranian detention. The Iranian authorities detained Ms Ismayilova and Mr Huseynov in Tabriz on April 30. Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran have been increasingly strained.

(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)