WASHINGTON, D.C.—Allegations that the government of Kazakhstan may have set up a slush fund to influence members of Congress are serious enough to warrant a federal investigation, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) said today in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
A grandiose project is rising in a sleepy corner of Central Asia, where southeastern Kazakhstan meets northwestern China. Officials in Astana hope the multi-billion dollar initiative can transform a patch of desert into an engine of growth.
BTA Bank, Kazakhstan's biggest lender before its nationalization and default two years ago, may have underestimated its bad-loan total and may require more government aid or risks being broken up.
ALMATY, May 28 (Reuters) - Opposition activists in Kazakhstan called on the government on Saturday to stop Chinese investment in the country's natural resources, saying Beijing could be preparing a land grab in Central Asia. Several hundred people gathered in Almaty, the country's largest city, for an officially sanctioned rally against Chinese expansion into Kazakhstan, a vast former Soviet republic holding 3 percent of the world's recoverable oil reserves.
OSKEMEN, Kazakhstan -- Kazakhstan's most prominent human rights activist, who is serving a four-year prison term over a fatal road accident, has been released from a low security labor camp on furlough for the first time, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.
Four years ago, Kazakhstan's foreign minister summoned the U.S. ambassador to a meeting in Astana, the Kazakh capital, to warn that a family dispute between the president and his son-in-law, two of the country's most powerful men, had boiled over.
Mukhtar Ablyazov is accused of running one of the biggest frauds in history
