Kyrgyzstan: Ousted security services chief now facing corruption allegations

Ousted former Kyrgyz security services boss Kamchybek Tashiyev, a former boxer who until last month was President Sadyr Japarov’s right-hand man, is on the ropes.  

A little more than a month after Japarov unceremoniously fired Tashiyev from his powerful post at the head of the State Committee for National Security, known as the GKNB, the country’s tax service accused Tashiyev on March 16 of being connected in a scheme to siphon millions of dollars from the country’s state-owned oil company Kyrgyzneftegaz. 

The Ministry of the Interior opened a criminal investigation the same day. 

On March 19, Tashiyev returned to Bishkek from abroad and was interrogated at the Ministry of the Interior, independent media outlet Kaktus reported. Kaktus published video showing Tashiyev’s motorcade leaving the ministry in the mid-afternoon. 

As of publication, Tashiyev himself had not been charged. 

Tax authorities are investigating whether Kyrgyzneftegaz’s oil production company sold crude to private companies, many linked to Tashiyev’s family members or associates and existing mostly on paper, which then resold the oil back to Kyrgyzneftegaz’s refinery, padding their margins along the way. 

“If we had done the refining and sold [the fuel] ourselves, then the profits would’ve been much higher,” Samsaaly Chetimbayev, the newly named head of Kyrgyzneftegaz, said in a slick video produced by the tax service. 

Losses ran to about 4 billion som, or about $45mn, over four years, according to the tax service. 

Authorities have taken into custody Тashiyev’s nephew Baigazy Matisakov, who had run the state-owned refinery since 2021, and Tashiyev’s associates Nazgul Aidarova, who ran one of the private companies, and Nurgazi Nishanov, an ex-MP who is on the board of Kyrgyzneftegaz, Kaktus reported. 

In addition, Kyrgyzneftegaz suffered an abnormally high oil loss rate in production and transportation and sold many of its most profitable products to companies linked to Tashiyev, rather than to the country’s major distributors, the tax service alleged. 

Kyrgyzstan has relatively little oil, producing about 180,000 tonnes a year, less than 0.2% of Kazakhstan’s annual production, but it is nonetheless a lucrative industry that is concentrated in Tashiyev’s native Jalal-Abad region. 

Tashiyev’s brother, MP Shairbek Tashiyev, who had previously refused to resign from parliament even as other allies did so, called it quits on March 14 after videos surfaced online of him discussing gambling debts. 

Tai-Muras Tashiyev – Kamchybek Tashiyev’s son who also ran a private oil company that authorities suspect is linked to the scheme – said on March 17 that his company did not do anything illegal. The company handled less than 2% of the state company’s oil and helped relieve storage issues, he said, according to Kaktus. He has not been charged. 

The corruption allegations against Tashiyev strike some observers as unsurprising, others as ironic, given that, as the GKNB chief, he led a far-reaching anti-corruption campaign, regularly tongue-lashing bureaucrats, arresting local officials and declaring the country free of organised crime last year. 

At the same time, Japarov’s administration too has ended up with egg on its face. 

Independent journalist Bolot Temirov, who runs an investigative YouTube channel, first reported similar accusations of the Tashiyev family’s oil sector self-dealing in 2022. 

Days after the report, authorities arrested Temirov on drug charges, in a move widely seen as retribution for his investigative work. Later, authorities stripped Temirov of his Kyrgyz citizenship, threw journalists from his channel in prison and, in autumn last year, a Bishkek court declared him to be an extremist, along with lots of other independent journalists. 

“Before, everyone was afraid of the GKNB, including tax inspectors,” chairman of the State Tax Service Almambet Shykmamatov told Kaktus. “Personally, I didn’t watch Bolot Temirov’s investigation, but ours was done completely differently.” 

The question has now arisen as to how Japarov could have been in the dark about what Tashiyev, a long-time friend and ally, was doing. 

“Our well-being depends on the conscientious work of government employees,” Japarov said during a December 18, 2021, visit to the state oil refinery after Tashiyev’s nephew took over. “It’s important for everyone out here to fight corruption in any of its forms.” 

Tashiyev stood behind him. 

Japarov has yet to publicly comment on the latest twists in the Tashiyev drama. But given the extent of control he wields over the operations of government, it seems likely Japarov was aware of and consented to the tax inspectorate’s plans to investigate Tashiyev. 

Temirov was reserved in his comments. 

“Logically, government authorities should’ve done such an investigation back then, but instead they started to persecute us,” he said on March 17. “Journalists make a big contribution to the government. If the government were smarter, they would’ve taken our investigation seriously and could’ve corrected mistakes in time.”

Alexander Thompson is a journalist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, reporting on current events across Central Asia. He previously worked for American newspapers, including the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier and The Boston Globe.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.