Kyrgyzstan buying blow

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Kyrgyzstan buying blow

The new political force came second in the October 4 election race securing 24 percent of the vote — results which surprised few observers. As the election battle reached its peak, it became clear that the party was unstoppable in its endeavour to fortify its position in Kyrgyz politics. At the same time, none of the opposition forces managed to pass the 7 percent threshold to enter the parliament. Nicknamed Raim Million, due to the enormous wealth he accumulated while working in the customs service, the most notorious member of the family is not officially part of the political project. He does not hold any public posts and rarely appears in public. But for years, he has been the ultimate kingmaker in Kyrgyz politics with his acolytes infiltrating key public institutions and local media. He was fired in by then-President Almazbek Atambayev and although he managed to appeal the decision in the Supreme Court, he never returned to the service. The clan from China has been running an underground cargo transport empire and acquired immense wealth through customs fraud. That would be impossible without the continuing support of Rayimbek Matraimov. Jeenbekov and Matraimov are the main punching bags of Atambayev rally heading to Ala-Too Kyrgyzstan pic. After leaving the custom service, Lozovsky says, through trusted confidants and proxies, Matraimov and the Abdukadyr family managed to take control of three important private custom terminals in the country. He is masterful in that sense. For years now, they have been investing in the media and public speakers of various nature to promote the agenda that the Matraimov organisation see fit. He still has influence on the events. There were reports that the kingmaker himself had fled the country, although this information has not been confirmed. The way Rayimbek constructed his empire was by infiltrating all-important decision-making bodies. He needs the security forces and other state bodies to cover up for his transnational schemes. They need to stay in power to keep their business and reputations intact. There are too many forces resisting the revolutionary moment. By Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska. Published On 13 Oct 13 Oct And some have more to lose than others. Sponsored Content.

Rayimbek Matraimov: Do protests threaten Kyrgyzstan’s kingmaker?

Kyrgyzstan buying blow

Miranda Patrucic has exposed corruption across Central Asia and in Europe. It all sounded very dubious. So, in when Patrucic, then an up-and-coming investigative reporter, was assigned to do a profile on the politician, she started digging into the public records to see what suspicious assets she could find. This was about to be her first big scoop. So, with the aid of a data-searching add-on from free software site Mozilla, she downloaded hundreds of land records from a randomly chosen wealthy area of Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. The hard work paid off. His brother and sister also held millions of U. Patrucic uncovered that since the wars Dukanovic and his family had been investing in real estate, stocks and other lucrative business deals — often involving clear conflicts of interest. She set out to find an elusive audit that PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC had performed on the bank after the Dukanovic administration had bailed it out in during the global financial crisis. The PwC report disappeared from public view, Patrucic explained. The reports were solid proof of how First Bank freely extended loans to Dukanovic and his cronies, who sometimes failed to repay those debts and used the money to fund financially dubious companies. Over the course of her career, Patrucic has exposed billions in telecom bribes in Uzbekistan; uncovered hidden assets among the ruling elite in Azerbaijan and Montenegro; and revealed a billion-euro arms trade between Europe and the Gulf states that helped fuel Middle East conflicts. Patrucic also trains aspiring journalists how to follow the money and uncover corruption and money laundering in authoritarian regimes where skilled journalists are sorely needed. In the war, you see how insignificant you are in this world and that your life can be taken away at any point. The bigger interest was in how the war would end. Even so, she got an early start in the field, working on a local newspaper over the summer holidays when she was 15, and then — still in her teens — clinching a job as a presenter on a local TV station. By the time she was set to go to university to study philosophy, she thought her days as a journalist were over. In , the BBC hired her as an assistant on a project to reform public broadcasting in Bosnia. Then one day, Patrucic saw a job announcement at the Center for Investigative Reporting in Bosnia, which Sullivan founded in The job at the Center for Investigative Reporting paid much less than other offers she received, but she took it anyway. But then every story became an immense source of satisfaction because I saw how it made a difference. Central Asia, which incorporates the former Soviet republics Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, lies at the center of the Silk Road, the ancient trade and cultural route that linked China to the West and remains an important hub for goods making their way east to west. It was in Kyrgyzstan, at the center of that trade route, that Patrucic — with the help of local journalists — covered one of her most impactful stories, which involved corruption stemming from the flow of goods through that country that eventually resulted in the toppling of a corrupt government. You are talking about billions of billions of dollars in different kinds of goods. Aierken Saimaiti, a self-confessed money launderer, contacted them to volunteer a treasure trove of documents that revealed how a secretive Uighur family ran an illicit trading empire with the help of a powerful customs boss, whose political connections made him virtually untouchable. The Uighur, also spelled Uyghur, are Turkic-speaking people native to the Altay Mountains, which stretch through China, Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan, and have long played an important role along the Silk Road. They moved their ill-gotten gains out of the country with the help of couriers who falsely declared them as their own, while truck drivers dodged strict currency controls by hiding the funds in spare tires. Saimaiti even provided the reporters with a rare photo of members of the Abdukadyr family, which up until then had managed to keep any of their images out of the public domain. The dangers of uncovering a criminal enterprise this large soon became apparent. Just weeks after arranging meetings with journalists in Istanbul, Saimaiti was dead. Turkish officials laid the blame for the slaying on two Kyrgyz citizens and a Syrian, who they said had links to militant Islamic groups. Locals struggling to make a living in the poor country were outraged. When two parties with close ties to the president and one backed by Matraimov garnered a quarter of the vote each, protests erupted in the capital, eventually leading to the annulment of the elections amid accusations of vote-buying and voter intimidation. Soon after then-President Sooronbay Jeenbekov resigned. It was crazy how it unfolded. The investigation into corruption caused so much anger because the party that was run by the Matraimov family literally tried to seize power and people were outraged. As with anti-fraud work, information sharing within and among organizations often happens far too little, and especially so in the intensely competitive media world. But it can make all the difference. When the OCCRP was tracking down information about the Matraimov and Abdukadyr families, it worked with three local news organizations, whose language skills and local know-how were key to getting these stories and facts required to publish them. That type of cooperation was essential in getting the word out about the depth of corruption in Kyrgyzstan that enraged locals in the poor Central Asian nation and ultimately led to the downfall of the government. I might find something in Azerbaijan that might not be interesting for my story but very relevant for British journalists. This way you multiply the impact. It just means they will get a more complete truth from different angles. Sometimes, though, cooperation has its limits, at least for journalists who play different roles from law enforcement, nongovernmental organizations NGOs and other activists. Journalists are restricted in how they can share information with law enforcement and other fraud fighters. The idea is that TI reuses some of the investigative findings of OCCRP and other media to pressure policymakers to stamp out influence peddling, money laundering and other forms of corruption. Cooperation like this is arguably more important than ever as fraudsters and other criminals become more sophisticated at evading justice. Like fraud examiners, investigative journalists face uphill challenges in collecting evidence that tie perpetrators to particular assets and crimes. The Uzbek-born businessman has adeptly jumbled funds and assets in all directions to keep governments, law enforcement and journalists off his tracks. He has used trusts, which is one of the most opaque structures nowadays, to detach himself from those assets, even though those assets are widely known to be owned by him. People are allowed to make money facilitating corruption and crime. Nor does it help that a European court ruling last year reversed efforts to open beneficial ownership registries and create more transparency in offshore havens. The court ruling stemmed from complaints from two companies that argued that access to ownership data violated their right to privacy. Leaked documents from the Pandora Papers showed that Patrick Hansen, one of the plaintiffs in the case, owned or co-owned companies in tax havens such as British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and Russia. He also reportedly has ties with wealthy Russian businessmen. The OCCRP is also developing a global archive of research material for investigative journalists, which as of publication covered countries. Patrucic also uses tools that are freely available on the internet or through news services such as Google Maps and websites to track flights and vessels. Social media has also aided Patrucic in her reporting. For example, in countries like Azerbaijan the government has closed access to journalists who wish to search business and land registries, but government officials and their families still love to boast in revealing posts about their wealth on Instagram and TikTok. Investigative journalism can be extremely satisfying when stories have a real impact. But it can also be frustrating when investigations fail to stop those caught in corruption scandals. The Abdukadyr family cited in the first case above is still a major investor in Uzbekistan and continues to have assets in the U. Patrucic and her fellow investigative journalists are now keeping a close eye on Ukraine, which has had its own struggles with and successes against corruption. And should Ukraine win its war against Russia, many are hoping that the country will ultimately prevail in clamping down on kleptocracy and dodge the waves of corruption that have typically come with the flood of post-war money. Paul Kilby is editor-in-chief of Fraud Magazine. Contact him at pkilby ACFE. Fraud Magazine examines how U. Attorney Damian Williams is leading the fight against financial fraud and public corruption from one of the most influential federal prosecutorial offices in the United States. Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the U. Department of Justice, has earned a reputation as a straight shooter and an adept investigator. He talks about his latest role as chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, mistakes made during the disbursement of COVID-relief money, how to avoid a repeat performance of the resulting fraud fiasco and the importance of strictly sticking to the facts. Cover article. Related Articles. Fact finder Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the U.

Kyrgyzstan buying blow