Kazakhstan has slashed its growth forecast for this year, finally acknowledging the scale of damage wrought to its economy by the slump in the price for its main export commodity.
Free speech campaigners are crying foul over a criminal investigation in Kazakhstan involving two prominent media figures on charges of embezzling nearly $1 million.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by today's detention of Seytkazy Matayev, head of the Kazakh Journalists' Union and the chair of National Press Club, in Almaty.
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.
