Monthly Archive

In the far east of Kazakhstan, right on the Chinese border, in a place that is ringed by mountains and flanked by deserts, a massive new epicenter of trade is rising up from an empty expanse of parche... read more..

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu visited Kazakhstan, on February 6, where he and his host government discussed bilateral cooperation on large-scale transit corridor projects (Akorda, February read more..

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. The government no... read more..

Free speech campaigners are crying foul over a criminal investigation in Kazakhstan involving two prominent media figures on charges of embezzling nearly $1 million.   Seytkazy Matayev, head ... read more..

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. Agents of Kazakhstan... read more..

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 parliamenta... read more..

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 ... read more..

 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 read more..

Kazakhstan’s plan to privatize its state industries is ambitious, but it faces some major barriers. In October 2015, the government of Kazakhstan announced the largest privatization of state-owned ... read more..

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. Worryingly for Astana, ... read more..

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 sma... read more..

On a recent snowy winter’s evening in Kazakhstan’s capital, arts buffs flocked to the state-of-the-art opera house. Kazakhstan may be in the grip of an economic crisis, but it was a full house at... read more..

Activist jailed for inciting social hatred on Facebook, then released after apology, as dropping oil prices hit hard. Something surprising just happened in Kazakhstan. Not the fact that an opposi... read more..

Feb 10 Kazakhstan's state pension fund will invest 500 billion tenge ($1.4 billion) abroad this year and buy bonds from local banks and state companies worth 600 billion tenge, the president's office ... read more..

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered his government on Wednesday to allocate 360 billion tenge (689 million pounds) to build affordable housing to support the economy, which has been hit by t... read more..

‘And if you look to your left you will see a house once linked to Rakhat Aliyev, Kazakhstan’s former intelligence chief, who died in police custody in Austria while awaiting charges of corruption, tor... read more..

The president of Tajikistan was granted the title “Leader of the Nation” in December 2015 by special law. However, he does not want to stop there. On January 22, Tajikistan’s parliament adopted new am... read more..

Kazakhstan is at a political and economic crossroads. The country saw impressive growth from 2000 to 2015 due to high oil prices, but it failed to diversify the economy away from extracting and export... read more..

Earlier this week, Kazakhstan’s foreign minister attempted to lay out why Kazakhstan would be hosting snap parliamentary elections next month. “Strong leadership and a clear strategy ... to overcome t... read more..