It is a mystery that would test the skills of the famous literary detective himself: who owns 221B Baker Street?

Anti-corruption campaigners Global Witness has called for more transparency about UK property ownership after reviewing alleged links between a former Kazakh secret police chief accused of money laundering and a £147m property portfolio.

Qishloq Ovozi is pleased to once again introduce an up-and-coming scholar in the field of Central Asian studies, Bradley Jardine, a student at Glasgow University and currently an intern at RFE/RL. Jardine examines Kazakhstan’s efforts to alleviate the effects of a regional economic crisis, while at the same time preserving what could be described as national vanity projects.

After months of pressure on Kazakhstan’s currency, the central bank has moved to allow the tenge to slide – but avoided the large snap devaluation that doomsayers have long been predicting. On July 15, the National Bank eased the corridor within which the tenge trades to allow it to drop by 5%, to 198 to the U.S. dollar.

After a three-month trial, an Austrian jury has found two Kazakh men not guilty of involvement in a brutal double murder committed thousands of miles away. Alnur Mussayev, a former Kazakh intelligence chief was cleared of all charges. Vadim Koshlyak, a former security adviser, received a two-year sentence for deprivation of liberty, but was cleared of murder.

An event meant to showcase Kazakhstan’s progress shows its dark side. One sunny afternoon in early June in Astana a bureaucrat is fired. When a bureaucrat is not transferred to another position, he must have done something wrong. In what seemed an emergency move, the chairman of the National Company Astana EXPO 2017 Talgat Yermegiyayev was removed, replaced on June 11 by the current mayor of Astana, Adilbek Dzhaksybekov.