With every passing month, Tony Blair looks more and more like a deposed emperor who has systematically set up his own government in exile. How else should we view the inexorable rise of his shadowy and quasi-political network of businesses, whose tentacles stretch from his smart offices next to the American Embassy in London into every corner of the globe?

Hooded and handcuffed, sixty year old poet Aron Atabek shuffles around a dimly-lit room. The guards accompanying him prevent any communication with his fellow prisoners; the hood that they've forced him to wear ensures that he can't even see them. This is the prize-winning poet's brief, daily exercise regime.

State seeks bailed-out bank sales; mooted deals get mixed reception. Four years after being nationalized and restructured by the Kazakh government, a trio of troubled Kazakh lenders are eyeing a return to private-sector control.

Der kasachische Ex-Botschafter in Wien soll einem Bericht zufolge wegen des Verdachts der Geldwäsche einvernommen werden. Auf Malta ist das Vermögen des Ex-Botschafters Kasachstans in Österreich, Rakhat Aliyev, eingefroren worden. Der Generalstaatsanwalt habe das „Einfrieren der Konten und des Eigentums" wegen Verdachts der Geldwäsche angeordnet, berichtete die Zeitung "Malta Today". Aliyev und seine Frau sollen zu den Vorwürfen einvernommen werden.

Ten years ago, Mukhtar Ablyazov stepped out of Kazakhstan's notorious Derzhavinsk prison with a pledge to give up politics. Ablyazov, a "wild '90s" oligarch and rising force in Kazakhstan's nascent opposition, had served just 10 months of a six-year sentence for illegal financial deals. But it had been enough. During his time in prison he had reportedly been beaten, placed in isolation, and denied access to his lawyers.

Italy's interior minister is under pressure from opposition parliamentarians to explain the deportation to Kazakhstan last week of the wife and daughter of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a prominent dissident and former banker who is in hiding.