Behind every great man is a great woman, as they say. But who stands behind the world's dictators? In good times and in bad, the ladies of the Dictators' Wives Club sure put up with a lot: corruption, political uprisings and often other wives. Some, like Rwandan First Lady Jeannette Kagame, use their position to advocate for important charitable causes in their nations.
London: Tony Blair has more than £13 million stashed in the bank following his most commercially successful year since quitting Downing Street. The latest accounts for a network of companies used to run his growing business empire show the former British prime minister's business interests around the world are booming.
A Ukrainian lawyer named Olena Tyshchenko traveled to the Royal Courts of Justice on the afternoon of July 22 as a bit player in one of the most complex legal dramas ever seen here. When she left the imposing edifice, though, she unwittingly walked into a starring role. Kazakhstan's state-owned BTA Bank had sued its former chairman, Mukhtar Ablyazov, accusing him of embezzlement and fraud on a monumental scale. It had won billions of dollars in damages.
If democracy and the Central Asian states have proved to be mutually exclusive, there are two reasons: history and geography. Lee Kuan Yew in his The Singapore Story, recalling his country's expulsion from Malaysia, writes, "Some countries are born independent. Some achieve independence. Singapore had independence thrust upon it." In 1991, the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — constituent units of the disintegrating Soviet Union — found themselves in a similar situation, suddenly and reluctantly independent.
The wife of an exiled Kazakh oligarch accused of embezzling millions of dollars from his former bank thanked Italy yesterday for helping her to overturn a travel ban, months after she was expelled from Rome. Alma Shalabayeva, the wife of exiled oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov, thanked Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino in a phone call for helping to persuade the Kazakh government to allow her return to Europe, the Italian foreign ministry said
Rakhat Aliyev, the former son-in-law of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbaev, has applied for citizenship in Cyprus, MaltaToday has learnt. The multi-millionaire exile has been living in Malta since 2010 and claims he is being hunted down by the Kazakh secret service he once headed.
Rome prosecutors on Monday said they were investigating an alleged role played by Italian energy company Eni in the expulsion of the wife and daughter of Kazakh oligarch and political dissident Mukhtar Ablyazov earlier this year. The probe comes after Italian investigative TV program Report broadcast an anonymous interview in recent weeks with an alleged manager of Eni, which has extensive investments in resource-rich Kazakhstan.
