Monthly Archive

VimpelCom Ltd., a mobile operator partly owned by Mikhail Fridman and other Russian billionaires, is in talks to pay about $775 million -- a near record -- to settle U.S. allegations it paid bribes in... read more..

US authorities are considering a probe into TeliaSonera’s operations in other Eurasian countries, building on an ongoing investigation over alleged corruption in Uzbekistan. TeliaSonera’s business de... read more..

When the first flames of the Arab Spring began to burn, a Tunisia suffering from decades of mismanagement, inequality and abuse broke free from under the long reign of Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali.As the g... read more..

Kazakhstan's relations with China have been growing extensively since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1992. As the first Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan, my memory of this bilateral ... read more..

Report shows weak disclosure on corporate holdings and country-by-country reporting, disclosure of programmes to prevent corruption scores betterThe world’s biggest telecommunications companies do not... read more..

Just in case it wasn’t clear, Emomali Rahmon is likely to be named the Leader of the Nation. Perhaps the only thing surprising about the news that a group of Tajik parliamentarians have worked up a... read more..

Central Asian countries (CACs), consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are not yet key export markets or investment destinations for Hong Kong companies, but th... read more..

Kazakhstan’s septuagenarian leader Nursultan Nazarbayev has issued a heartfelt call for public servants to step aside after 25 years in the job and make way for fresh blood. The long-serving presiden... read more..

In late 2011, Vladimir Putin presented his idea for the creation of a “Eurasian Union,” in the north-eastern part of the Euro-Asiatic continent.[1] By that time, he had already been officially nominat... read more..

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak must be super proud of his family, for the wrong reason. Najib himself is easily the most controversial prime minister the country has ever produced. Born ... read more..

Ethnic Russian man given five-year jail sentence for running a web poll on region's sovereignty. An ethnic Russian blogger from Kazakhstan's east was given five years in jail for publishing an onli... read more..

Kazakhstan launched property and capital legalisation campaigns in September 2014 that are scheduled to run until Dec. 31, 2015. The campaigns include the approval of a law “On amnesty of Kazakhstan c... read more..

Kazakhstan’s networked authoritarianism is a powerful system of media control, but it leaves little room for the regime to manoeuvre. After a visit to Almaty’s Children Hospital in September, Ainura ... read more..

China will be keeping a close eye on its energy interests in Central Asia as Russia reinforces the borders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) against external threats. Speaking at a summ... read more..

Kazakhstan has used a variety of means to promote itself as a model of economic development and social progress, such as chairing the OSCE in 2010, hosting Expo 2017 and bidding for the 2022 Winter Ol... read more..

A significant devaluation of Kazakhstan's the national currency tenge over the last months resulted from the country's high dependence on oil revenues, according to European experts. "It became evide... read more..

It’s unclear that Astana can match big ambitions with the reality of an underdeveloped bureaucracy. Kazakhstan, without a doubt, has capitalized on its natural resource wealth, using massive oil and ... read more..

Another day and another few Nordic executives are stepping back from their roles because of a corruption scandal in a former Soviet economy. Telenor ASA, a phone company owned by the Norwegian govern... read more..

In the face of his country’s ongoing economic turmoil, Kazakh President Nazarbayev is engaging in fast-paced diplomacy to boost his country’s growth prospects. Hot on the heels of high-level... read more..

Norway's Telenor ASA sought to control damage from bribery allegations engulfing its 33%-owned affiliate VimpelCom on Thursday, as Norwegian prosecutors detained a former VimpelCom chief executive and... read more..

THE Queen rolled the red carpet out today for the Kazakh dictator whose son-in-law bought Prince Andrew's house for £3 million more than the asking price. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kaz... read more..

Senior security official Meng Jianzhu met Chair of the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan Nurtai Abykayev here on Wednesday, urging the two sides to enhance cooperation in fighting crime. Meng... read more..

Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose regime has been criticised by rights groups, will meet David Cameron, the Queen and UK business leadersThe man who has ruled Kazakhstan for two and a half decades, Presiden... read more..

In Texas or the North Sea, oil companies struggling with falling prices are firing thousands of employees. In Kazakhstan, it is not so simple. The central Asian nation was a poster child of the ... read more..