A Tale of Hounding the Corrupt in Bishkek

Kyrgyzstan appears to be continuing its grand tradition of hounding previous presidents.

In early May, Iskhak Masaliev, a deputy from the Onuguu-Progress party in Kyrgyzstan’s parliament and a member of a parliamentary commission investigating the causes of the January breakdown of the Bishkek Power Plant, suggested that former President Almazbek Atambayev be deprived of his status as an ex-president and with it his ex-presidential immunity.

What began as a corruption hunt has dovetailed with spiraling political tensions between Atambayev and his hand-picked successor, current President Sooronbay Jeenbekov. The fact of the matter is that there are few clean hands when it comes to the Chinese-modernized Bishkek Heating and Power Plant.

On one of the coldest weekends to hit Bishkek this past winter — with a high of 5 degrees Fahrenheit between January 26 and January 28, and a low of minus 16 F — the Kyrgyz capital’s thermal power plant began malfunctioning.

The power plant, which was built by the Soviets in the 1960s, produces electricity to power the city but also churns out hot water, which heats radiators across Bishkek.

According to local media, on the evening of January 26 some equipment at the plant failed, leading to a decrease in electrical output and lowering water temperatures. One of the most artful descriptions of the breakdown came from a local journalist, who wrote on Facebook that the radiators were “like the body of a dying man — all getting colder.”

Attention focused almost immediately on the Chinese company that had completed a modernization project on the plant in August 2017. The modernization project replaced eight old boilers with two new boilers, with eight other old boilers remaining in operation. The January failure knocked the remaining old boilers and one of the new ones offline. It’s unclear whether the modernization work was at fault for the overall failure, but parliamentary poking into the matter has uncovered a possibly corrupt scheme.

The parliament commission examining the matter has called in several Atambayev-era officials, including former Prime Minister Sapar Isakov, who was recently booted from that position and previously served as the president’s chief of staff responsible, in particular, for spearheading work on foreign investments. Two other former prime ministers, Jantoro Satybaldiyev and Temir Sariyev, were also called in to testify.

Satybaldiyev served as prime minister from September 2012 until March 2014, Sariyev from May 2015 to April 2016, and Isakov from August 2017 to April 2018.

Work to modernize the plant began in 2014, following a 2013 loan agreement between China’s Export-Import Bank and the Kyrgyz government. The loan agreement was part of a larger financial aid package given to Kyrgyzstan on occasion of the upgrading to the China-Kyrgyzstan relationship to a “strategic partnership” in the opening moves of Beijing’s unrolling of what is now known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Negotiations on the power plant project went back as far as 2011, when Atambayev was prime minister.

A Chinese company, Tebian Electric Apparatus Stock Co. Ltd. (TBEA), was granted the contract and modernized the plant for $386 million. Kyrgyzstan has until 2033 to repay the loan. With interest, Bishkek is on the hook for nearly $480 million.

Early outrage focused on the fact that no tender had been made for the project and cries of corruption ensued. Isakov told parliament that the Chinese government demanded that TBEA be granted the contract.

“There is a lot of inaccurate information around about [supposed] lobbying for this agreement,” he said. “The choice of TBEA was the official position from China and we could not change this.”

Indeed, articles in Kyrgyz media from 2014 reveal that this logic existed from the very start. Electrical Stations is the state-owned company that manages Kyrgyzstan’s power-generating facilities, including Bishkek’s thermal power plants. The company’s former deputy general Salaydin Avazov said in 2014 that a tender – the usual process of soliciting proposals for a project from several companies – was impossible. “If we had money for reconstruction, we would have held a tender. And since there is no money, we have agreed to the terms of Eximbank,” he said.

Essentially: China offered the loan only if it had its pick of companies to execute the project and Kyrgyzstan agreed.

Avazov was detained by Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (SCNS, GKNB, or UKMK) in April in relation to a pending criminal case stemming from the plant’s breakdown. Isakov has also been questioned by the SCNS.

Other parts of the loan agreement have drawn sharp criticism. The agreement reportedly didn’t even designate Kyrgyzstan as a sovereign entity, instead naming it as a private party. The impact of this is that if a legal dispute arises – say, over accusations of price inflation – it would not be solved diplomatically or via an international tribunal, which considers matters between sovereign states, but instead by a court in Hong Kong.

Those supporting the project then and now have a simple argument: it was all necessary to complete the work. This argument, however, is unsatisfying given the plant’s failure in January and the steady trickle of tangential revelations.

For example, in late May the SCNS filed corruption charges against Kubanychbek Kulmatov, the recently fired head of the customs service. Kulmatov had served as mayor of Bishkek from 2014 to February 2016. The charges accuse Kulmatov of redirecting $2 million worth of Chinese grants – given as part of the overall 2013 financial aid package – which were supposed to go to the construction of schools in the regions. Instead, the charges allege, Kulmatov had the funds funneled into the mayor’s coffers, which granted a construction contract without a tender process for a school on the fringes of Bishkek to a private company.

Eurasianet called Kulmatov “the first top-tier Atambayev associate to face actual criminal charges.” Kulmatov denies any wrongdoing and has said the investigation against him “has a political subtext.”

While it seems clear that Kyrgyzstan got a bad deal, looking at the current corruption hunt – which has only focused on Atambayev’s allies without hitting those who are now Jeenbekov’s allies – one may be tempted to quote Queen Gertrude from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Former parliamentarian Omurbek Abdyrakhmanov, one of only seven to oppose the TBEA deal in 2013, told Eurasianet, “This was a scam from the get-go.”

“This company worked the MPs, brought them over to China. Our MPs went there, toured Hong Kong, stayed in five-star hotels, received presents… Anywhere else in the world you would call this bribery. So criminal cases should be filed against the deputies. But now these MPs are making themselves out to be clean and pure. So why did they go and ratify this deal?”

And therein lies a key problem. Kyrgyzstan's politicians continue to only actively pursue corruption among those already fallen from power. John Heathershaw, a noted Central Asia academic at the University of Exeter, put some of the political manhunt into context of regime consolidation in an interview with RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service. He then commented on Twitter in a discussion about the present politics in the country that “A strong democracy holds leaders to account when in power. A weak one does so when they have left office.”

Update: On May 29, as this issue went to press, Kyrgyz authorities filled corruption charges against former Prime Minister Sapar Isakov in connection to the power plant fiasco.