Well-informed sources say Mina Corp, the current fuel supplier to the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan, is pulling out of the bidding for the latest fuel contract.
The European Union is mulling ways to expand its textile trade with Uzbekistan, a major cotton supplier. Rights activists are lobbying hard against the ratification of EU trade measures, asserting that adoption would encourage the continuing use of forced child labor in the Central Asian nation.
Forced child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields will be the focus of a June 21 hearing at the European Parliament. The International Labor Rights Forum, an advocacy organization for workers’ rights, is calling for an international investigation by the International Labor Organization (ILO) into the use of child labor and has dismissed suggestions from the Uzbek authorities that they would monitor themselves as “ludicrous.”
But whether or not the European Union has either the will to examine the practice of forced child labor in Uzbekistan or its relationship with Tashkent remains to be seen. In February, the EU adopted a preferential textiles trade agreement with Uzbekistan which included various customs and tariffs breaks and unfettered access to the European markets.
However, an increasingly vocal set of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are warning that the EU’s human rights efforts are being undermined by unprincipled trading agreements with the authoritarian Central Asian state.
Liam Aylward, an Irish MEP, said in a press release on June 8:
I have repeatedly raised the issue of human rights violations with the Commission, in particular in relation to the Uzbek cotton industry, which is one that relies heavily on child workers and the lack of action on this issue of the Commission is worrying […]
UNICEF has reported huge child labor violations in Uzbekistan, yet nothing is being done to ensure that child labor cotton does not make its way onto the European market. In fact the euro notes we all have in our wallets could have been produced with cotton picked using child labor.
Mina Corp, the Pentagon fuel supplier once accused of being everything from a CIA front to the corrupter of Kyrgyz presidents and their sons, is attempting to become a model corporate citizen.
The company is granting $2.5 million to the American University of Central Asia (AUCA), a prestigious, cash-strapped institution catering to bright but often financially challenged students, mostly from Kyrgyzstan.
The money, according to a joint June 8 press release, will be used to create a one-year “bridging” program -- “The New Generation Academy” -- to annually prepare 70 talented high school graduates for a higher education.
In addition, Mina will “pay for 15 full scholarships, including room and board, for the Academy’s most able graduates in both 2013 and 2014 to study for a four-year degree at AUCA.”
Mina Corp doesn’t have many friends in Kyrgyzstan. But even the company’s critics admit $2.5 million earmarked for education is not an unwanted gesture, although some noted the sum is pocket change for Mina and its sister company Red Star Enterprises Ltd, who between them have sewn up hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel contracts at the Manas air base near Bishkek and Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
AUCA President Andrew Wachtel said at a press conference on June 8 that he was introduced to Mina Corp’s initiative in early 2011.
“We were looking for a reliable partner,” he said.
The Pentagon agency responsible for getting supplies to US troops in Afghanistan has been quick to touch base with newly appointed ambassadors in Central Asia. Two recent meetings play into the theory that Washington lets the decade-old war dictate the shape and scope of its diplomatic activity in the former Soviet republics near Afghanistan. Perhaps, though, new rules for transparency in government tenders will do some good in one of the world’s most corrupt regions.
Krol reportedly said, “It’s important for USCENTCOM, US Transportation Command, DLA and any other entity that has an interest in the Northern Distribution Network [NDN] to coordinate their operations.”
Likewise, before Pamela Spratlen, the new US ambassador in Bishkek, even landed in Kyrgyzstan she had an April 20 meeting with Thompson to be reminded just how critical “embassy support” is because DLA does “business in Kyrgyzstan in support of military operations in Afghanistan.”
While DLA oversees the running of the NDN through some of the most corrupt countries imaginable, it’s the Department of State that usually finds itself on the receiving end when things go wrong.
A United Nations Committee Against Torture report released June 6 rapped Turkmenistan for maintaining a “climate of impunity,” and called on Ashgabat to address systematic human rights abuses as a “matter of urgency.” The report should complicate efforts by the European Union and United States to tighten energy relations with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s regime.
One of the main gripes that circulates among all sorts of companies attempting to operate in Central Asia is that some "insiders" are able to gain access to confidential bid packages, undercut their competitors' price and win contracts with a neatly revised price.
For at least one company that managed to procure business in Uzbekistan in this fashion, the game is up. And a pricey gambit it’s been, too.
According to US Department of Justice, Tenaris SA will cough up $3.5 million for breaches of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The company, which is headquartered in Luxembourg, allegedly bribed Uzbek officials to relay their competitors’ bids for various pipeline projects.
Tenaris, a global manufacturer and supplier of steel pipe products and related services to the oil and gas industry throughout the world, admitted that its employees and agents offered and made improper payments to officials of OJSC O’ztashqineftgaz (OAO), an Uzbekistan state-controlled oil and gas production company, and failed to record such payments accurately in Tenaris’s books and records. In connection with four public bids to provide oilfield pipe and related services for energy extraction and transportation projects, Tenaris retained an agent to obtain competitors’ bid information, which Tenaris then used to secretly submit revised bids to its advantage. Tenaris agreed to pay the agent 3.5 percent of the value of four separate contracts, while being aware or substantially certain that the agent would pay all or a portion of the money to one or more OAO employees.
Turkmenistan has, after nine years, presented its first report to the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT). UN representatives found the report to be lacking in detail, and disappointed by the responses of Turkmen officials to pointed questions.
Cash-strapped Kyrgyzstan has a potential fix for its fiscal woes. Experts say the country is capable of doubling its gold production within a decade and reaping a financial whirlwind. Yet it’s no sure thing that officials will get their regulatory act together to make that happen.
