Category: Legal & Regulatory

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Central Asia Legal & Regulatory Politics

Turkmenistan Has First Open Trial Since Niyazov Cult Time

Turkmenistan’s Supreme Court has sentenced three central bank officials for bribery at the end of a Niyazov-style open trial, unprecedented under current president Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov. State television showed the open trial last Friday.

Berdymukhammedov predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, who enjoyed a bizarre personality cult during his 21-year rule until he died suddenly of a heart attack in December 2006, had routinely held show trials of top officials to demonstrate his attempts to root out corruption.

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Eastern Europe Economy & Foreign Trade Finance & Taxes Issue Legal & Regulatory Politics

Ukraine to Confirm Pension Reform for IMF Tranche

Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada has approved an unpopular pension reform bill set as a key requirement to unlock a US$15.6 billion aid package from the International Monetary Fund to the Ukrainian economy.

The bill, approved early Friday, is designed to overhaul Ukraine’s Soviet-era pension system as the government seeks to slash spending in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis.

Ukraine’s parliament approved a government bill on pension reform at first reading on June 16.

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Eastern Europe Economy & Foreign Trade Issue Legal & Regulatory Russia

Latvia to Lure Foreign Investors With Five Year EU Residence

A new Latvian law that provides residency rights to foreign investors has provided a boost to the real estate market and nationalist sentiment alike, the BBC reported.

The new amendment to the Latvian Law on Immigration came into force in July, 1, and allows foreign investors and their family members including those from non-EU countries to receive a 5-year residence permit in Latvia along with the right to travel in the Schengen area freely, if they purchase Latvian property of at least 70,000 euros (US$95,000) in value, or invest in a business.

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Central Asia Current Events Issue Legal & Regulatory Politics

Kazakhs Try to Keep First President

Kazakhstan’s long-serving president Nursultan Nazarbayev on Monday asked a constitution council to examine a proposed referendum on another decade of unchallenged rule, which would allow him to bypass two elections and lead the country unopposed until 2020.

On December 27, the Central Election Commission registered a statement by the initiative group in favor of such a plebiscite, which was endorsed by both houses of parliament. In their letter to Nazarbayev, the legislators asked him “to support the initiative to call a national referendum on the following question: Do you accept the law on Amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan, envisaging the possibility of extending in a national referendum the powers of the first president of Kazakhstan?”

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Eastern Europe Economy & Foreign Trade Issue Legal & Regulatory

Large-Scale Privatization Planned in Ukraine

Ukraine hopes to gain from privatization of US$1.3 billion in 2011 by selling at least 25 percent in 162 enterprises this year, Interfax reports.

The draft list of enterprises includes stakes that have been offered multiple times in the past but never sold.

“We continue to campaign, that the electricity should go for privatization. And it will be privatized. This will be the main event of the privatization of the year,” Alexander Ryabchenko, Ukrainian State Property Fund (SPF) chairman said earlier in December 2010.

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Finance & Taxes Issue Legal & Regulatory Politics

Yanukovych Vetoes Ukraine’s New Tax Code

A new version of the tax code will be presented to the Ukrainian Parliament by Thursday after President Viktor Yanukovych has exercised his right of veto the bill, caving in to the largest opposition protest since his election in February.

The new version will be drafted by the president’s office and the government together with representatives of small businesses.

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Central Asia Legal & Regulatory

Kazakhstani Authorities Promise to Reduce Number of Checks on Business

The Kazakhstani State Office of Public Prosecutors (SOPP) and The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MEDT) declared, that by 2011 the business community of the country will be divided into two types: those who are counted by the state as law-abiding, and those who are not. The second type of businesses need to be ever ready to be inspected any time, while the first kind has been promised to be left in relative peace.

Addressing the issue at a public event titled “Legality and Transparency of the State Control as a Basis of Consumer Rights Protection,” the authorities didn’t point out what criteria they are going to use to judge businesses and “to die-cast them as wolves or innocent sheep.”

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Culture & History Legal & Regulatory Russia

Russia Altering 70-Year-Old Penal Colony System

Beginning this year, Russia is altering a prison system that dates back of 70 years to the time of Stalin, separating for the first time career criminals from the general prison population.

As the New York Times reports, currently, “the inmates are divided into barracks housing a hundred or so men without regard to the severity of their crimes. At night, a guard locks the door and walks away, leaving first-time offenders and people convicted of nonviolent crimes to fend for themselves in a crowd of gang members, hit men and other career criminals.”

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China Current Events Legal & Regulatory Politics

“China has no Dissidents”

In a session that lasted less than ten minutes, a Beijing court on Thursday upheld an 11-year sentence against popular Chinese human rights activists Liu Xiaobo, co-author of the pro-democracy Charter 08.

After the court decision, US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman called on “the government of China to release him immediately and to respect the right of all citizens to peacefully express their political views and exercise internationally recognized freedoms”.

European Union representatives in Beijing said: “The EU believes that the verdict against Liu Xiaobo – for his role as author of Charter 08 and for publishing articles concerning human rights on the internet – is entirely incompatible with his right to freedom of expression.”

Beijing said the prosecution was in accordance with Chinese law.

“China has no dissidents,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.

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China Current Events International Relations Legal & Regulatory North Korea

China Sends Envoy to North Korea

SEOUL (Reuters) – A senior Chinese envoy was in North Korea to prod the reclusive state back to stalled nuclear talks while the South sent a team across the border on Monday for talks to restart tourism projects halted due to political wrangling.

The North will also host the U.N.’s top political envoy later this week, with analysts saying this engagement may bode well for the dormant six-way disarmament-for-aid talks and could lead to Pyongyang reducing the security threat it poses to the region.

The destitute North is feeling pressure to return to the nuclear talks, where it can win aid to prop up its broken economy, due to U.N. sanctions imposed after its nuclear test in May 2009 and a botched currency revaluation that sparked inflation and rare civil unrest.

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