It is like Doctor Faustus' pact with Mephistopholes: immediate benefit to be paid for in treacherous longer-term loss. But should the pact, preliminarily agreed upon between the current state-controlled board of BTA Bank, materialise, those who created the current mess will still be in charge of the process getting out of it. A mere glance at BTA's figures still looks very much like an anti-Hamlet scenario - with the Danish royalty surviving, Duncan holding the strings from abroad and no Fortinbras available to make a fresh re-start. Will the rest be silence...?

A ten-billion-dollar kickback is something in America these days is likely to be considered a mere trifle in the face of a multi-trillion black hole in the system. For Kazakhstan, the country's largest bank's misappropriation's costs are an open wound in the population's households that will keep bleeding for years to come. The key to the issue is the man who holds the dagger and his name is Mukhtar Ablyazov, now huddling up in the plush of London Town with the likes of his fellow embezzler Boris Berezovsky. Will he end up as a Kazakh variant of the latter, or as a Kazakh Khodorkovsky?

OSCE Centre facilitates discussion on simplification of pre-trial criminal procedures in KazakhstanA recently adopted law that aims to simplify preliminary criminal investigation procedures in Kazakhstan was in focus at an OSCE-supported roundtable discussion that was held in Astana today.

To supply troops in landlocked Afghanistan, the United States is relying on short-term relationships with dictatorial nations in Central Asia without factoring any long-term strategy for the region, according to testimony delivered last week to senators.

Kazakhstan has a unique problem. It's long on land and short on the people to farm it. The Central Asian country is huge -- about six times the size of France -- but has less than one-quarter of France's population -- just 16 million people. Although Kazakhstan's desert and mountainous regions are not arable, its ample steppe land is, and enough of the Kazakh population turns to farming it to make the country one of the world's leading grain producers.

China will soon reach an agreement to receive nuclear power assistance from Kazakhstan, a source told China Daily.