Bishkek Power Plant. Photo Credit: Danil Usmanov By Caroline Elkin, Program Assistant with CIPE’s Europe and Eurasia team. There are trite ways to describe almost every post-Soviet country: Belarus is Europe’s last dictatorship and Kazakhstan suggests Borat. Kyrgyzstan, sometimes called the island of democracy in Central Asia, appears luckier. In reality, Kyrgyzstan’s cliché camouflages the… Read More
Tselinniy back in the day. Photo Credit: Central State Archive of Film and Photo Documents and Audio Recordings of the Republic of Kazakhstan. By Caroline Elkin, a Program Assistant with CIPE’s Europe and Eurasia Team Last week, a court in Almaty, Kazakhstan sentenced the city’s former akim (mayor or governor) Viktor Khrapunov, his wife, stepson,… Read More
Late last week, one of the world’s largest integrated telecommunications services operators, VimpelCom, agreed to pay a $835 million settlement to U.S. and Dutch authorities. The company is accused of paying $114 million to Uzbek president Islam Karimov’s relative, widely believed to be his daughter, Gulnara Karimova. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) claims that… Read More