Kazakhstan's anti-corruption agency is investigating the head of the journalists' union Seitkazy Matayev over suspected theft and tax evasion, it said on Monday, less than a month before a parliamentary election.

Netherlands-based telecommunications giant VimpelCom announced today that it would pay U.S. and Dutch government authorities $795 million to end an investigation into bribery in Uzbekistan. While the settlement does not reveal the recipient of the bribes, most sources point to Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the Uzbek president.

 A U.S. federal judge has thrown out a defamation lawsuit brought by a close business associate of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev's former son-in-law, who was found dead in an Austrian jail cell last year.

Kazakhstan’s plan to privatize its state industries is ambitious, but it faces some major barriers.

Ethnic tensions are bubbling in southern Kazakhstan, where local authorities have stepped in to restore calm following the murder of a child by a member of an ethnic minority.

Excluding hereditary monarchies, there are close to 40 countries around the world in which the national leader has been in power for 10 or more years, writes Freedom House analyst Elen Aghekyan. A small number of rulers stay in office by simply ignoring the letter or spirit of the law.