The Kyrgyz interim government plans to nationalize Aalam Services, the main fuel depot at Manas Airport and the adjacent US-owned air base. By doing so, revenues from the sale of fuel to the Manas Transit Center will flow directly into the state’s coffers, the head of the interim government, Roza Otunbayeva, said.
“We will nationalize this company and it will move into state ownership. We will still deliver fuel to the Transit Center [but] all the money will go to the state treasury,” local news agencies quoted her as saying on June 9.
The Manas Transit Center is a key logistics hub for the US-led war in Afghanistan. The facility uses up to 12 million gallons of jet fuel per month.
But not everyone is convinced that the nationalization of Aalam Services will lead to transparency when it comes to the supply of fuel at the air base.
“If Aalam Services is nationalized it doesn’t mean it will be all clean,” Taalaibek Okenov, the President of the Association of Civil Aviation Airlines, told EurasiaNet.org.
“We have to change the system of civil aviation management […] Manas Airport is a great, fat piece [of property.] There will always be a fight over it,” he said.
On May 14, former Manas airport head Bakytbek Sydykov was charged with corruption in relation to the sale of Aalam Services to Manas Aerofuels, a company allegedly controlled by Maxim Bakiyev, the son of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Sydykov “entered into a criminal conspiracy” with other board members to sell Aalam to Manas Aerofuels in June 2009 for just under $6 million even though the airport was able to gain close to $4.5 million per year in rent for the facility, the Kyrgyz General Prosecutor’s Office claimed.
Prior to the Bakiyevs’ tenure as the first family of Kyrgyzstan, Aalam Services was reportedly owned by relatives of Askar Akayev, the Kyrgyz president deposed by the so-called revolution that brought Kurmanbek Bakiyev to power in 2005.
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.