Mina Corp, the controversial aviation fuel supplier to the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan, is hitting back at official allegations of corrupt ties to the family of ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Defense Logistic Agency Energy (DLA-E), the arm of the Pentagon which oversees the Manas air base’s fuel contract, is reviewing the contents of the US Congressional report “Mystery at Manas” before deciding what to do next with Mina Corp, the shadowy and reticent company at the center of an elaborate procurement fraud.
On December 22, EurasiaNet.org asked DLA-E if they considered Mina Corp’s procurement of fuel using false end user certificates to be in line with agency directives and standards?
A DLA spokeswoman said:
No, DLA does not consider false end user certificates to be in line with either applicable US laws and regulations or DLA directives and standards.
However the agency insists the Congressional report, which was released on December 21, had nothing to do with their decision to ask previous bidders to extend their offers until February 16, 2011.
The findings of the Congressional report had no bearing on DLA Energy's decision to ask offerors to extend their offer under the Manas solicitation.
But if it wasn’t the Congressional report, what was it that prompted DLA to ask bidders on December 16 to keep their bids open?
Losing bidders in a recent tender to supply jet fuel to the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan have been contacted by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and encouraged to renew their offers.
A scheme to deceive Russia about the purpose of jet fuel purchases, carried out by Mina Corp and Red Star Enterprises, the two main fuel suppliers to the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan, undermined US diplomatic interests and jeopardized American and NATO military operations in Afghanistan, a US congressional report released December 21 asserts.
Maxim Bakiyev claimed the idea to re-name the US air base at Manas near Bishkek a “Transit Center” was his, according to a recently WikiLeaked diplomatic cable.
But a US Congressional report released December 21 reveals the bright spark behind the semantic slight of hand as none other than a Kyrgyz citizen with a vested interest in keeping the base open -- Erkin Bekbolotov of Mina Corp.
According to the report, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s February 2009 announcement that the air base would close prompted Bekbolotov to call his “social acquaintance” Maxim. Bekbolotov’s novel solution to his potential loss of business involved re-defining the base and using “pressure from Russia” to gain more rent.
The report “Mystery at Manas” explains:
In light of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia’s agreements to permit NATO’s use of their territory and airspace to transit non-military goods, Mr. Bekbolotov suggested to Mr. [Maxim] Bakiyev that instead of expelling the United States from Manas, the Bakiyev administration could require the United States to downgrade its status from a military installation to a logistical and transport hub while using the pressure from Russia to substantially increase their rental payments.
Mina Corp, the holder of a lucrative fuel-supply contract for the strategically important Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan, has accused Kyrgyz authorities of attempting to "disrupt and seize the fuel supply chain" at the base outside Bishkek.
If -- and it’s a big if -- the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline moves from being a figment of inter-governmental imagination to being an actuality of pipe full of actual gas, Kabul stands to make a mint.
Turkmenistan stands to make a lot of money too, but not as much as it would like.
In 2008, Ashgabat was looking for $457 per ton of gas. Sources quoted by The Economic Times, an Indian business paper, however, suggested on December 13 that Ashgabat would sell gas for TAPI at a rate of $272 per thousand cubic meters (tcm). (By contrast, the rate Turkmenistan agreed for China was only $195 per tcm.)
Delhi should expect to pay $362 per tcm by the time charges and transit fees to Afghanistan and Pakistan are factored in, however. Turkmenistan wants to sell 33 billion cubic of meters of gas to India and Pakistan. Afghanistan wants to rake in transit fees ranging from a $1 billion to $1.4 billion annually. Pakistan and India want to keep gas prices for their ever growing number of consumers low and 33 billion cubic meters should just about do it.
But is the promise of $1.4 billion in transit fees enough to bring stability to southern Afghanistan, the persistently volatile area, through which the pipeline must pass? Some Afghan observers say it might be.
Others say the TAPI is just another flammable item in an explosive region.
“The situation in southern Afghanistan is no more stable now as it was when Bridas and UNOCAL were duking it out for control of the pipeline,” Candace Rondeaux, International Crisis Group’s senior analyst in Kabul, told EurasiaNet.
“Internally, of course, no one can say for certain how to stabilize Nimroz, Helmand, and Kandahar enough that work could begin on such an
Insurgency? What insurgency? Setting aside concerns about Islamic militants, the presidents of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, along with India’s petroleum minister, Murli Deora, have signed an inter-governmental agreement pledging to construct a 1,735-kilometer natural gas pipeline connecting all four states.
According to a fresh trickle of news from WikiLeaks, Maxim Bakiyev told a US diplomat that Washington had him to thank for keeping open the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan after his father, then-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, declared he would close it.
The revelation comes from a purported US Embassy cable, unavailable on the WikiLeaks site but printed by Russky Reporter, a Russian magazine owned by the pro-Kremlin media concern Expert.
The cable -- allegedly sent a day after the announcement that the base would be renamed a “transit center” -- details a dinner date between the former US Charge d’Affaires, Lee Litzenberger, ex-Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Kadyrbek Sarbayev and Maxim in July 2009.
Litzenberger notes that the “slightly spoiled” Maxim is a casual dresser, unshaven, slightly overweight and balding, with a penchant for personalized cigars and scotch.
At the dinner, held in an “almost tastefully decorated” annex to a plush Bishkek restaurant, Sarbayev reportedly told Litzenberger that Maxim had used his influence to convince Bakiyev Snr to keep the base open after he promised Moscow he would close it in return for a wad of cash.
Amid an ongoing Kyrgyz government probe into fueling practices at the Manas Transit Center near Bishkek, investigators are examining the relationship between Red Star Enterprises Ltd and Mina Corp, the former and current holders of a Pentagon supply contract, and entities once allegedly controlled by Maxim Bakiyev, the son of fo
