MARCH 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swiss investigators said they had started investigating Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, for money laundering. They had previously been investigating four people linked to Ms Karimova. Ms Karimova is reportedly currently under house arrest in Tashkent.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan is fast becoming a pariah state for businesses.
The US authorities opened corruption investigations into business conducted by Russia’s Vimpelom and Swedish-Finnish TeliaSonera in Uzbekistan, shortly after Swiss authorities announced they were looking into money laundering allegations against Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbek president Isam Karimov.
It’s not a pretty picture. Vimpelcom and TeliaSonera also have registered offices in the Netherlands, where the authorities have also launched investigations.
The trigger for these problems was a $330m deal that TeliaSonera struck with Gibraltar-registered Takilant to buy a 3G licence in 2007. Takilant was officially owned by Gayane Avakyan, an associate of Ms Karimova.
A Swedish investigation has been looking into whether this payment was actually a bribe to the Karimov family. Mr Karimov and his family have run Uzbekistan as their personal fiefdom since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. They may also have had personal stakes in Uzbekistan’s big businesses.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Food prices in Uzbekistan may have risen by as much as 30-70% over the last few weeks, an anecdotal survey by the Uzmetronom.uz website said. While Uzmetronom.uz’s figures may be out, there is little doubt that rising energy prices and falling business activity is pushing up inflation in Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov has passed a decree which stated that he had to give permission for the top 25 ranked officials in the government to go on overseas trips, media reported. The decree is not designed to save money, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, but to safeguard state secrets.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Beeline Uzbekistan, Vimpelcom’s subsidiary, saw its revenue grow by 11% in 2013 to $175m, it said during its annual results presentation.
The company also boosted its customer numbers by 3% in 2013 to 10.5m partly because MTS’s subsidiary, Uzdunrobita, had been chased out of Uzbekistan in 2012. This is a smaller jump than you may have imagined but most of the switch over of customers from Uzdunrobita to Beeline happened in Q4 2012.
Most importantly from the presentation was the statistic that data usage rose significantly in Uzbekistan last year.
Beeline reported a 61% jump in mobile data revenue. This is mainly internet surfing on mobile phones. What this means is that the Uzbek mobile consumer is becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Beeline is one of two mobile providers in Uzbekistan. Ucell, owned by Swedish-Finnish mobile operator TeliaSonera, has a similar number of customers.
Both Beeline and Ucell will have watched the MTS saga apprehensively. For now, though, Uzbekistan is a good market.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — According to the Uzmetronom.uz website, many of the statistics published by the state agency are incorrect. It quoted independent economists saying that the government uses favourable data to inflate its achievements. Uzbekistan’s has been reporting a booming economy despite apparent stresses in the system.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
FEB. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek immigrants contributed around a third of the remittances sent from Russia between January 2010 and September 2013, media reported quoting Uzbekistan’s Central Bank. The Central Bank data underlines how dependent ordinary people in Uzbekistan are on cash sent home by Uzbeks working in Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
MARCH 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Apparently recognising that more needs to be done to encourage private commerce in Uzbekistan, the government is considering introducing a new law on privatisation, media reported. Over the past couple of years, Uzbekistan has privatised a number of state-owned assets.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
MARCH 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, and her daughter have not been heard from since a raid on their Tashkent home on Feb. 17. Exiled opposition website uznews.net quoted an Uzbek intelligence officer saying Ms Karimova was under house arrest. The accuracy of this report cannot be independently verified.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
MARCH 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — If Georgia’s support for the revolution in Ukraine was no surprise, Uzbekistan’s apparent concern about the territorial integrity of Ukraine is.
Uzbekistan was the first from the block of former Soviet states that you would have bet on supporting Russia to break ranks.
“Events in Ukraine … create a real threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country and have caused deep anxiety and concern in Uzbekistan,” the Uzbek foreign ministry said in a statement on its website.
Uzbekistan has a reputation for isolationism. It has awkward relations with its neighbours and has stayed clear of the Russian-led Customs Union.
Even so, Uzbekistan is part of the military orientated Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) which includes Russia, China and most of Central Asia. Russia is also an important economic partner for Uzbekistan.
For Uzbekistan to issue such a statement criticising the Russian military’s deployment in Ukraine is risky. Uzbekistan’s relations with its former colonial master have been patchy and, after this proclamation, may be even patchier.
Perhaps spurring Uzbekistan on in the background is its current ties to NATO. NATO is paying Uzbekistan handsomely to shift its kit from Afghanistan back home. Uzbekistan, possibly, had one eye on their current benefactors when issuing the statement.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
