Hello everybody! The company I work for manufactures gold-mining machinery. I’m sure you understand that it’s a single-purpose process that’s why we work with only regular and certain customers which don’t usually cancel deals. However some of our Canadian partners mining in the Kumtor site in Kyrgyzstan told us they would not buy and maintain machinery any longer because they were going to leave Kyrgyzstan. Well, it seemed strange at first as the business there was very profitable. But later a friend of mine working for that company explained that it was because of the Kyrgyz President’s son Maksim Bakiyev who had been appointed to a senior position in the government to control all the business in Kyrgyzstan. He was putting spokes in their wheels because they had refused to give him kick-backs from their profit. I didn’t believe it in the first place. How come, I thought, that son of the President is doing such disgusting stuff? But some time later I came across this blog. (roberts-report.blogspot.com/2008/10/have-all-tulips-wilted-kyrgyz-official.html). And all my uncertainty was dispelled. You see, if he dared to threaten a woman with children, then a foreign company would certainly not be an obstacle on his way to enriching himself!
I personally think that this kind of ‘officials’ have to stand trial and be put in jail rather than appointed to senior offices, i.m.h.o. They spoil not only the lives of their people but of foreign citizens also! Well, I understand that neither you nor I can do anything about it, but there are such international organizations as OSCE and UN. Why on Earth are they keeping silence?