Nariman Jeanev
Kutmanova says that she was sidelined because she objected to a contentious mining project.
Late last week, Dinara Kutmanova, a former top official in Kyrgyzstan, went to the press with a dramatic story.
On June 27, her son, Kemelbek, was kidnapped in Istanbul, she told reporters. Kutmanova said that that same evening, she received a terrifying video clip via Telegram.
“In the shot, there was my son with a pistol pointed at him. He said he had been taken. They were demanding $2 million. He said that the kidnapping had been ordered by people from Kyrgyzstan,” she told 24.kg news agency.
Kutmanova, who ran the Natural Resources Ministry from May 2021 to March 2023, said she pleaded with the gang and insisted she did not have that kind of money.
“I told them I had an apartment that I had bought before I became a minister. And there’s a car. They worked it all out and asked for $600,000. I have more than 60 screenshots of our exchange,” she said. “I asked them for time and put my property up for sale.”
As the story began to spread, sympathy poured in from all over Kyrgyzstan. Public calls were made for the authorities to do their upmost to rescue the ex-official’s son.
It was like something out of a thriller. And, as it turned out, just like a movie, much of the story may have been fabricated. With all sides coming forward with divergent accounts, however, it is complicated to detect the line between fact and fiction.
On July 23, the day after Kutmanova went to the press, the Interior Ministry refuted the kidnapping claim and said that Kemelbek Kutmanov had, in fact, been detained as a result of being placed on an international wanted list. Kutmanov left Kyrgyzstan at the end of May, first for Kazakhstan, then Vietnam, from where he traveled to Moscow before reaching Istanbul, they said. Kyrgyz police say Kutmanov was detained by the Turkish migration service. This version of events had not been confirmed directly by Turkish media or official sources as of July 27.
In another dramatic turn of events of July 25, the State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, announced that Kutmanova herself had been detained.
The GKNB said in a statement that Kutmanova had while heading the Natural Resources Ministry created an “extensive corruption network” involving nine people, including Kemelbek, her sister and a housekeeper.
As with a lot that is murky in Kyrgyzstan, this saga has its roots in the giant Kumtor mining project.
Like the current president, Sadyr Japarov, Kutmanova came to prominence in the early 2010s for her campaigning to have Kumtor wrested out of the hands of its Canada-based developers and placed under government control. She repeatedly called at the time for the mine’s operators to face stiff fines over alleged environmental violations.
In October 2013, the Green Party, which was headed by Kutmanova’s husband, Erkin Bulekbayev, filed suit to demand 444 billion soms (around $9 billion at the time) in compensation from the Kumtor mining company. The suit went nowhere, but this kind of litigiousness appears to have appealed to Japarov, who came to power in a turbulent street uprising in October 2020.
A few weeks after Japarov became president, Kutmanova caused a minor sensation by speaking out on alleged corruption in the management of waste in the capital, Bishkek, and was as a result tapped to head up the State Environmental Protection and Forestry Agency. That stint triggered much acrimony within the agency. In May 2021, Kutmanova was named head of the State Committee for Ecology and Climate. In October that year, the committee was upgraded to the Natural Resources, Environment, and Technical Oversight Ministry.
Kutmanova ran that ministry, whose responsibilities included oversight of Kumtor, up until March 2023. By mid-2021, the government had completed the process of taking total control over the mine.
In an eyebrow-raising arrangement, Kutmanova’s ministry was funded directly by Kumtor. The GKNB says that between 2021 and 2023, the ministry was yearly allocated 325 million soms ($3.7 million) directly by Kumtor. The Natural Resources Ministry used 790 million soms of these finds for the implementation of 110 eco-projects.
The security services claim they detected financial irregularities at 22 of these projects. Money was often apportioned without the necessary paperwork or expert input, the GKNB said.
More specifically, Kutmanova has been accused of covertly liaising with companies to assign them deals to implement these projects.
To illustrate its allegations, the GKNB detailed one case in which the Natural Resources Ministry is said to have reached a deal to buy working apparel for the value of 34 million soms. Upon investigation, it emerged that the company belonged to a friend of Kutmanova’s son and that the items were worth only 11 million soms.
Among the other alleged schemes described by the GKNB was what they described as a bogus initiative to protect forests, which they say netted Kutmanova’s sister more than 7.5 million soms. They further claimed that Kutmanova’s housekeeper was the director of a company that won a contract to build a mini-hydroelectric power station in the Chui region.
Things began looking bad for Kutmanova on July 20, when GKNB chief Kamchybek Tashiyev spoke at a government meeting about corruption allegedly flourishing under her watch at the Natural Resources Ministry.
“The officials who have stolen from the country will be punished whatever happens, even after they have been dismissed,” Tashiyev said, before namechecking Kutmanova.
Kutmanova responded to those remarks with her own nebulously framed counter-accusations. She predicted that she might be arrested over her involvement with another long-troubled mining project: the Andash gold and copper deposit in the Talas region.
In her telling, the developers of the mine, long the object of criticism of environmentalists and local activists, were stripped of their operating license in 2017. Kutmanova said that after a series of convoluted vicissitudes, the license was again restored to the Andash Mining Company in February 2022, much against her objections.
“I conducted an internal investigation and reported [my findings] to the president, and he instructed me to look into the situation, but soon I was relieved of my post,” she said. “The country’s leadership is being misled by unscrupulous people.”
She did not specify to whom she was referring.
Source : EURASIANET
Rasul Tahirev
