APRIL 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan will begin construction of a $214m tire production plant near Tashkent in August, media reported quoting the state’s chemical company Uzkimyosanoat. The development of the factory is part of scheme by Pres. Shavkat Mirziyoyev to expand Uzbekistan’s industrial base.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
MARCH 30 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev has signed into law bills that soften sentences for some crimes and also cuts pre-trial detention times, state- run media reported. If the laws are upheld it will mark a victory for human rights activists who have long complained about Uzbekistan. Mr Mirziyoyev is trying to unwind some of the worst excesses of Islam Karimov’s rule.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
APRIL 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — On his first trip to Moscow as Uzbekistan’s president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed investment pledges worth $12b and trade deals worth $3.8b with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The main thrust of the deals was in gas. Mr Mirziyoyev said that Russia had agreed to increase the amount of gas it buys from Uzbekistan, a vital revenue earner for the Uzbek economy.
“The case in point is significant expansion of deliveries of natural gas to Russia on the basis of the five-year contract to be concluded for the first time,” the TASS news agency quoted Mr Mirziyoyev as saying.
The deals bode well for Mr Mirziyoyev who cuts a very different figure on the international scene than his predecessor, Islam Karimov, who died in September after ruling for 25 years. Where Karimov was cagey, aloof and unilateral, Mr Mirziyoyev has shown that he is able to charm regional heads of states and get bilateral deals signed.
Mr Putin, who always had a difficult working relationship with Mr Karimov, appeared happy to see Uzbek-Russian relations blossom.
“We are witnessing our trade and economic ties intensifying, and we have always paid special attention to it,” he was quoted as saying. “It should be noted that in general we keep the trade turnover at a high level. In some positions it grows in a remarkable manner.”
The meeting in Moscow, though, came just two days after an alleged suicide bomber from Central Asia killed at least 14 people on a metro in St Petersburg. Security, cracking down on terrorist recruitment drives in Central Asia and stopping the spread north of the Taliban from Afghanistan, was also high on the agenda.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
MARCH 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan’s security forces are spying on exiled Uzbeks across Europe in order to intimidate and create a climate of fear, the London- based human rights organisation Amnesty International said in a new report. It accused the Uzbek government of creating a Soviet-like atmosphere of fear and repression inside and outside Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
MARCH 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — China’s Anhui Conch Cement Co. said that it wanted to invest in a 2m tonne/year cement plant in Uzbekistan because of the improve economic conditions in the country. Cement production has become big business in Uzbekistan with Chinese, Turkish and Russian companies all setting up production there, but if Anhui Conch did build a 2m tonne capacity plant it would be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
MARCH 21 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Uzbekistan are trying to crackdown on Black Market money changers, the Eurasianet website reported. It described a raid by both undercover and uniformed police on money changers outside a major Tashkent supermarket. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, in power since September, the Uzbek authorities have managed a careful devaluation of the som currency. The crackdown on the once thriving som Black Market, appears designed to coincide with this devaluation.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
MARCH 22 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its final report on the Uzbek presidential elections in December, the OSCE’s ODHIR laid out 24 points where Uzbekistan could improve its electoral system. It said these were aimed at improving the system’s transparency and strengthening the confidence ordinary people have in the process, as well as stopping fraud and ensuring there is genuine competition. The election was the first that ODHIR, the OSCE’s election monitoring unit, had observed in Uzbekistan. Its broad assessment was that the process had been flawed.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
MARCH 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — >> What is the International Crises Group and why is it important to discuss its report on the first 100 days of Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s rule in Uzbekistan?
>> The International Crisis Group, or ICG, is a think tank based in Brussels. It draws most of its funding from Western governments and reports on some of the world’s long-running problem areas. It is influential. One of the areas it reports on is Central Asia and this report, on Mirziyoyev’s first 100 days as Uzbek president, is one of the first major efforts to evaluate his influence over the region’s most populous country.
>>How does the ICG view Mirziyoyev?
>>Essentially, positive with a strong dose of caution. Like others, the ICG welcomed moves by Mirziyoyev to improve relations with neighbours and has also said there are signs he wants to change the economy which has operated under a pseudo-Soviet centrally controlled system since the 1992 break up of the USSR. But the report’s authors also sounded a serious, and wise, note of caution. They pointed out that Mirziyoyev had been PM under Islam Karimov when the current system, designed to protect the elite, was devised.
>> Got it. What, according to ICG, are the most serious issues facing Mirziyoyev?
>> To start with, the ICG said that Mirziyoyev needs to shore up support within the ranks of the Uzbek elite. Without this support he will fail to update the system. It pointed to a government reshuffle at the start of the year which had improved things but said that he still needed to patch up his differences with Rustam Azimov, an ex-finance minister, and Rustam Inoyatov, the head of the National Security Service.
>> What about ordinary Uzbeks? Does ICG have any insight on how they view their new president?
>> Only a smattering of anecdotal evidence that suggests that Mirziyoyev is going about things the right way and that he has started out with a degree of popularity. ICG quoted a 55-year-old teacher in the Fergana Valley saying: “Mirziyoyev is a person who knows Uzbekistan’s real picture, he can make things better.”
>> And to sum up?
>> The ICG broadly welcomed Mirziyoyev’s first 100 days in office, although it also said that more is needed. It did urge foreign powers to work more closely with Uzbekistan under Mirziyoyev to ensure reforms that have been hinted at come through and don’t become early-day regime hubris.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
ALMATY, MARCH 23 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a high-spirited and carefully choreographed meeting in Astana, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev lauded what they said would be a fruitful and fulfilling partnership between the two neighbours.
The meeting was important as it marks another genuine shift in diplomatic relations for Uzbekistan. Under Mr Mirziyoyev, Uzbek diplomats have been working hard to shake off their difficult image and to repair damage inflicted during the cantankerous 25 year rule of Islam Karimov.
“Kazakhstan wishes our strategic partner, neighbour and brotherly people of Uzbekistan, prosperity and well-being,” the Kazakh presidential website quoted Mr Nazarbayev as saying. “In the future, we look forward to a fruitful relationship in the framework of bilateral contacts.”
The diplomatic and economic relationship between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the most populous and wealthy countries in the region, is vital for Central Asia. If they work in harmony, then the other three coun- tries of the region will also prosper. If they squabble, as has been the case, then economic development will be slow.
This was the two leaders first meeting since September 2016 when Mr Nazarbayev travelled to see Karimov’s grave in Samarkand. Mr Mirziyoyev had then been acting president. He was officially sworn in as Uzbekistan’s second post-Soviet president in December.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
MARCH 22 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — ING, one of the Netherlands’ biggest bank, became the second international bank to be placed under investigation over alleged links to money laundering by the Uzbek government.
Earlier this year prosecutors in Switzerland said that they had started an investigation into the role played by Lombard Odier, a Geneva-based private bank, in a series of bribes paid by European telecoms firms for access to Uzbekistan’s potentially lucrative mobile market.
In a statement, the Dutch prosecution service said: “The bank [ING] is suspected of having failed to report, or report in a timely fashion, irregular transactions. It is suspected of having enabled international corruption and money laundering.”
A spokesman for ING said that the company couldn’t make specific comments about an ongoing investigation other than to say that it was cooperating with the authorities.
Media reports said that the investigation will focus on a $184m payment made in 2007/8 by Netherlands-based Vimpelcom via ING to a Gibraltar-registered company owned by an associate of Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of former Uzbek president Islam Karimov. This was allegedly part of a larger bribe that Vimpelcom has already admitted paying to the Karimovs, then the unrivalled First Family of Uzbekistan, for access to the 35m-person market. Last year Vimpelcom paid a $795m fine for the bribe, the second largest fine for corruption in Western corporate history.
The discovery in 2012 by Western media of the bribes has already destroyed the careers of high-flying telecoms executives and persuaded both Sweden’s Telia and Norway’s Telenor to sell out of the Central Asia/South Caucasus market, which they have said they believe is riddled through with corruption.
It was also part of the undoing of the Karimovs’ grip on power in Uzbekistan.
Ms Karimova, had appeared set on succeeding her father as Uzbekistan’s president. She had styled herself as a glamorous multi-talented pop-singer, fashion-designer, captain-of-industry and Uzbek ambassador to the UN but her enemies swooped when the scale of her corruption became apparent.
Already unpopular in Uzbekistan, she was placed under house arrest in 2014 when she return to Tashkent and has barely been seen or heard of since. Her associates were arrested and convicted of various financial crimes.
When her father died in September, Ms Karimova was even prevented from attending his funeral in Samarkand.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
