Ex-finance director at arm of FTSE 100 company claims officials received holidays and cash for lucrative contracts. A subsidiary of Compass Group, the FTSE 100 catering firm, paid bribes to Kazakhstan government officials and has been reported to the Serious Fraud Office, according to allegations made public by a whistleblower.
Cherie Blair's law firm is working for the Ministry of Justice in Astana, Kazakhstan, while her husband, Tony Blair is an adviser to president Nursultan Nazarbayev
Behind every great man is a great woman, as they say. But who stands behind the world's dictators? In good times and in bad, the ladies of the Dictators' Wives Club sure put up with a lot: corruption, political uprisings and often other wives. Some, like Rwandan First Lady Jeannette Kagame, use their position to advocate for important charitable causes in their nations.
London: Tony Blair has more than £13 million stashed in the bank following his most commercially successful year since quitting Downing Street. The latest accounts for a network of companies used to run his growing business empire show the former British prime minister's business interests around the world are booming.
We are glad to see Azerbaijan and the European Union moving closer to each other. Our cooperation is bearing fruit. Just look at the results of the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius and the signature of the Visa Facilitation Agreement. The Visa Facilitation Agreement as well as the Mobility Partnership have been signed. These agreements, together with the Readmission Agreement – to be signed early next year – will boost people to people contacts, which is an important element of our cooperation.
The last symbol of Prince Andrew's marriage to Sarah Ferguson – the much derided 'Tesco-style' mansion he was given by the Queen as a wedding present – is set to be demolished and replaced with a house that looks strikingly similar.
When Bulat Utemuratov's boss told him to go to Europe and open the first trading house for their newly independent Kazakhstan, his reaction was pure Soviet. "Oh no, They want to exile me," Utemuratov remembers thinking with alarm. The year was 1992. The Soviet Union had just been disbanded, and Russia had introduced its own ruble, sparking hyperinflation in former republics such as Kazakhstan that were still using the old Soviet currency. The first, and still only, president, former Politburo member Nursultan Nazarbayev, was desperate for hard currency.
The spurned ex-wife of a Kazakh fertilizer tycoon says her former hubby is full of it. In new court papers, Maira Nazarbayeva asked a Manhattan judge to toss her hubby's lawsuit against her – in which he accuses her of swiping almost $100 million of his fortune to pay for jewelry and a Plaza apartment — because she believes he's faking an illness to duck depositions.
It looks like Kanye West has taken a page from Jennifer Lopez's playbook, playing a big bucks concert for a world leader with a long list of human rights abuses. West performed over the weekend at the wedding reception for the grandson of Kazakhstan's longtime president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the New York Times reports.
A rights group has hit out at hip-hop superstar Kanye West for performing at the lavish wedding party of the Kazakh president's grandson, calling the country a "human rights wasteland." Thor Halvorssen of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation said President Nursultan Nazarbayev's "regime crushes freedom of speech and association."
