Monthly Archive

China's vast foreign investment program comes at a sharp cost to human rights and good governance Great power competition is back. And China is now combining its vast economic resources with a musc... read more..

Kazakh and European parliamentary officials reconfirmed mutual commitment to strengthening ties as they adopted a joint declaration following the May 10 15th annual session of the Kazakhstan-European ... read more..

After decades in the economic wilderness, Uzbekistan wants to reintegrate itself into the global value chain. A Eurobond is on the way and regional integration has become a key priority In the year... read more..

Strongly criticized by the president, some small banks in Kazakhstan are asking for help from the state to withstand a liquidity crisis. Kazakhstan’s Single Pension Fund (ENPF) could lend cash agai... read more..

Khorgos, a new state-of-the-art port in the middle of the Kazakh desert, sums up the grand ambitions of the Belt and Road Initiative. But it is as much driven and funded by Kazakhstan as it is by Chin... read more..

Kazakh police detained dozens of people who demonstrated in the Central Asian nation's biggest city on Thursday after an opponent of President Nursultan Nazarbayev urged his followers to protest. M... read more..

The demonstrations were organized at the behest of foreign-based opposition figure Mukhtar Ablyazov. A rights group in Kazakhstan has said numerous people were detained by police on May 10 as the read more..

Post-independence Kazakhstan has seen a revival in Kazakh genealogies, sub-ethnic lineages and identities. The Adai Ata mausoleum. March 2017. Photo courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.As t... read more..

The 18th-floor unit has a storied history of lawsuits that broke apart a leading Kazakh family Bolat Nazarbayev, the brother of Kazakhstan’s authoritarian leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, sold his four... read more..

To the untrained eye, the activity looked innocent enough. Patriotic Kazakhs marked a public holiday in March by displaying balloons of the same turquoise colour as the national flag. The hitch was... read more..

A businessman whose name has resurfaced in the Trump-Russia investigation once received more than $21 million connected to an alleged money laundering scheme involving Kazakh oligarchs, according to c... read more..

On April 19, Kazakhstan’s Senate ratified the agreement allowing the US to use its ports of Aktau and Kuryk on the East coast of the Caspian Sea to transit military supplies to Afghanistan, the Russia... read more..

A businessman whose name has resurfaced in the Trump-Russia investigation once received more than $21 million connected to an alleged money laundering scheme involving Kazakh oligarchs, according to c... read more..

A Plaza Hotel condo owned by the brother of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev has sold at a loss to a mystery buyer for $14 million, according to city property records. Bolat Nazarbayev bought t... read more..

At the height of World War II, Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, argued that the United States had amassed such wealth and power that the twentieth century would come to be known simply as “th... read more..

Interest is growing in illicit finance because great-power competition is playing out in boardrooms, stock markets, trade wars, and compliance departments. The US anti-money laundering (AML) regime... read more..

How might the states of Central Asia and the Caucasus benefit from China’s grand new investment initiative? IN THE days when the Silk Road linked China to Europe, merchants would crisscross Eurasia... read more..

Amnesty International has called on authorities in Kazakhstan to halt criminal proceedings against a pregnant woman accused of giving financial backing to an opposition political movement. The Lond... read more..

Behind the mecenatismo of a former prime minister, Kazakhstan’s opposition figures find a new platform in Brussels. A diverse team of opposition figures, human rights defenders, and artists from Ka... read more..

The impetus to keep hammering away at the international film market has come from President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Mondays are not normally a busy day for cinemas, but at least one screen at the K read more..

President Trump says he surrounds himself with the best people, though the cast of characters around him and his campaign has also included a very particular subset, post-Soviet oligarchs. Special ... read more..

So reads the blue plaque on this pretty Georgian terraced house, home to London’s Sherlock Holmes Museum. In a city of storied buildings, the home of the fictional detective is as famous as they come.... read more..

Authorities want the app makers to delete all content by government foe Mukhtar Ablyazov. Kazakhstan has warned it will block the popular Telegram messaging app unless the company agrees to delete ... read more..

Every five to 10 minutes, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week, a fresh group of Uzbek pilgrims troops into the tomb of their late president, the dictator Islam Karimov, to pay homage at his white ... read more..

Gunter Papenburg sent a letter to Zhakip Asanov, the Prosecutor General of Kazakhstan, requesting him to gain insight on dismissing former minister's case Gunter PAPENBURG, a multi-millionaire from... read more..

The Geneva Prosecutor’s Office is conducting its own investigation against Viktor Khrapunov, his wife Leila Khrapunova and stepson Ilyas Khrapunov, Zakon.kz reports. The criminal case is now at the st... read more..

With all the quiet chaos beneath the surface in Moscow, Beijing seems poised to benefit. As Putin has become the longest-serving Russian leader since Stalin, the country’s economic and political st... read more..

A British parliamentary subcommittee has opened an inquiry into tax avoidance and evasion in the wake of Paradise Papers revelations. “After the Paradise Papers, it is clear that this issue hasn’t ... read more..

A former mayor of Kazakhstan’s largest city and his son may be on the hook for more than $280,000 for violating a confidentiality order in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit over embezzlement and money lau... read more..

Rothschild, which advises the Kazakh central bank, has recommended that the country’s privatisation programme include pre-sales to strategic investors before shares are put on the market. Oil-rich ... read more..