JUNE 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — About 30 homeowners protested in central Almaty against excessive interest rate repayments on their mortgages, media reported. This protest was important as it was a relatively rare public demonstration in Kazakhstan. Personal debt repayments have become a potentially thorny issue for the government.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
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.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Atyrau, west Kazakhstan, sentenced eight men to jail for terrorism related offences and links to radical Islamic groups, media reported. Seven of the men received prison sentences of 18 – 23 years. One received a one-year suspended sentence.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh security forces have interrogated Alma Shalabayeva, the wife of fugitive ex-banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, media reported. Italian police deported Ms Shalabayeva last week on allegations of holding an illegal passport. The Kazakh authorities accuse Ablyazov of plotting to overthrow the Kazakh government.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will spend roughly $3.2b a year until 2050 on developing alternative green energy sources and reducing its dependence on coal-fired power stations, energy minister Nurlan Kapparov told media. Coal-fired power stations produce roughly 80% of Kazakhstan’s power.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s parliament reduced the 2013 state budget by 4% because of low prices for metal and other mining exports. Metals have become an important part of Kazakhstan’s export earnings over the past few years but a global recession and sanctions against Iran, previously a major customer, have hit earnings.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — As a statement of intent it was emphatic. Kazakhstan’s environmental protection minister Nurlan Kapparov told a news briefing in Astana on June 5 that the state would invest $3.2b a year until 2050 on developing alternative sources of power to reduce its reliance on coal.
Mr Kapparov said that this was the equivalent of 1% of Kazakhstan’s annual total GDP.
This scale of commitment is genuinely large and will put Kazakhstan in the top league of countries committed to reducing their reliance on coal-fired power stations.
Currently, coal-fired power stations generate about 80% of Kazakhstan’s power needs.
The initiative to push for green alternative power sources is an indicator of a developed economy, just the sort of image that Kazakhstan wants to project. It is also part of Kazakhstan’s wider policies for both power production and for winning EXPO-2017. One of the themes of EXPO-2017 is green energy.
Kazakhstan has already made headway in developing alternative energy. This year it has announced initiatives to boost wind, hydro-electric, solar and nuclear power.
Mr Kapparov said that he wanted to see green energy make up half of Kazakhstan’s total production by 2050.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
MAY 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has scrapped a plan to build a grain silo in Iran, media reported quoting an official at the Kazakh agriculture ministry. Kazakhstan is one of the world’s biggest grain producers and Iran is one of its biggest markets. The Kazakh agriculture ministry blamed political instability in Iran for pulling the plan.
ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)
MAY 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh authorities have stepped up their hunt for Mukhtar Ablyazov, the fugitive former chairman of BTA Bank.
First, in April, police in Almaty arrested Ablyazov’s former business partner Erlan Tatishev. Now, on May 29, Italian police swooped on Ablyazov’s wife, Alma Shalabayeva, and their 6-year-old daughter who were living in Rome.
The actual whereabouts of Ablyazov, wanted by British police for lying in court, is unknown, although media reports said Ms Shalabayeva was carrying a Central African Republic passport with a fake name when she was detained.
Lawyers for Ms Shalabayeva said the raid was illegal and that she held a Kazakh passport with a Latvian residency permit allowing her to stay in the EU. The Kazakh prosecutor-general has accused Ms Shalabayeva of being involved in various crimes.
Regardless, it appears defeating Ablyazov in court was not enough for Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
He has long considered Ablyazov to be dangerous. After fleeing Kazakhstan in 2009, Ablyazov set himself up in London. He funded political parties and media projects with the thinly disguised aim of unseating Mr Nazarbayev.
The Kazakh authorities accuse Ablyazov of stealing billions of dollars from BTA Bank, trying to overthrow the government and plotting to bomb public buildings.
This year a British court ruled against Ablyazov and ordered him to repay the Kazakh state billions of dollars.
British judges also decided that Ablyazov had lied in court. He has been on the run since 2012.
The net is tightening and the Kazakh authorities may soon have their man. This might, though, be the easy bit.
What to do with Albyazov then is possibly more complicated.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)
MAY 30 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s ministry of agriculture warned that a large plague of locusts was likely to infest parts of north and west Kazakhstan. The ministry’s press release said serious locust plagues were cyclical and that the last major infestation was in 2000.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)
