An Autumnal Purge of Kyrgyz Ministry Officials

It’s been a wild autumn for Kyrgyz ministry officials. The Ministry of Labor and Social Development hemorrhaged four top officials; meanwhile, Kyrgyzstan’s long-serving minister of foreign affairs resigned on the same day the Kyrgyz ambassador to South Korea. The former ambassador to South Korea then announced that he would not return to Kyrgyzstan and was seeking asylum.

The year-old administration of Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov has experienced a significant churn of officials. While new administrations can be expected to phase out top officials appointed by the preceding administration, such shuffling has taken on a different tone in Kyrgyzstan. The growing rift between Jeenbekov and his predecessor, Almazbek Atambayev – who both belong to the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan (SDPK) – has been punctuated by the dismissal of top officials.

In 2018, the most serious marker of the Jeenbekov-Atambayev rift has been the pursuit by the Jeenbekov administration of corruption charges against Atambayev’s former prime ministers and other officials linked to Chinese loans and the breakdown of the Bishkek Power Plant in January. Atambayev himself may be feeling the heat as the Kyrgyz parliament in October moved forward with legislative changes that would strip former presidents of immunity.

Does the ministerial upheaval in October fit into this pattern? In some aspects it does, in others, not so much. There is a common thread worth tracing: corruption.

—

First, the upheaval in the Labor and Social Development Ministry involved the minister, Taalaikul Isakunova, and two of her deputies, Zuurukan Kadenova and Lunara Mamytova.

Kadenova’s scandal erupted first. On September 21, the deputy was returning from a training in Seoul, South Korea when her flight leaving Incheon International Airport was delayed due to a pre-takeoff ruckus. Kadenova, as 24.kg reported it, was engaged in a “drunk in-flight brawl.” Eurasianet, noting that the details remain unclear, pointed out that there are two versions of the story:

According to two separate accounts — one from an MP who was also on the plane and Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador in Seoul — Kadenova got onboard in a state of advanced inebriation and proceeded to get into an altercation with a stewardess...

Kadenova, who had just attended a Seoul-funded training gig, does admit to vomiting into bags provided by flight attendants. But she say this only happened because she had taken medication on an empty stomach. There was no disagreement with the airline staff, except for when they tried to prevent her from going to the bathroom, she said.

Bishkek issued orders to its diplomats in Seoul to keep mum on the incident, but Kyrgyz Ambassador to South Korea Kylychbek Sultan (to whom we will return) ignored the order and largely confirmed the version that painted Kadenova as drunk. Air Astana, the airline, put out a statement that prior to takeoff flight attendants noticed that Kadenova “did not react to questions, and her physical condition did not allow her to fly.” In their account, she refused to leave the plane, prompting the removal of the rest of the passengers and a nearly two-hour delay. She was fired the next day.

The Kadenova incident prompted Aida Kasymalieva, a former journalist and current member of parliament, to file a request for information about foreign trips made by the Labor and Social Development Ministry’s leadership.

Kasymalieva was on to something. Soon after, local media helped direct attention to Lunara Mamytova, another deputy in the ministry, whose Instagram feed showed her frequently abroad. In response to criticism of her travels, Mamytova argued that even Kyrgyz pensioners could go abroad if they saved up money.

According to CEIC, an economic data company, annual household income per capita in Kyrgyzstan was $730.83 as of December 2016. On the cheaper end, a roundtrip flight from Bishkek to Washington, DC — where Mamytova attended a World Bank training course earlier this year — costs more than $700.

The World Bank “study tour” reportedly cost upwards of $7,000 and Kasymalieva alleged that the funds were taken from a World Bank loan — Mamytova argued that that wasn’t a problem and that Kasymalieva was merely jealous. The two women attended the same school at one point. Then the Kyrgyz Prosecutor General’s office got involved, confirming that the Ministry of Labor and Social Development’s leadership had not coordinated overseas trips with the prime minister’s office and its staff had illegally used diplomatic passports for personal travel.

Mamytova resigned on October 9; two days later her boss, Minister Taalaikul Isakunova, also resigned. Isakunova had reportedly taken trips to St. Petersburg, Argentina, and the United States without approval. According to 24.kg, Isakunova’s November 2017 trip to St. Petersburg to attend the anniversary meeting of the Consultative Council on Labor, Migration, and Social Protection of the Population of the CIS Member States took place after the government refused permission for the trip. Isakunova also reportedly took her in-laws along on business trips, using government money for bigger hotel rooms to accomodate them.

On October 15, a fourth Labor and Social Development ministry official, deputy Jyldyz Polotova, was dismissed by Prime Minister Mukhammedkaliy Abylgaziyev, who was ordered by Jeenbekov to sort out the mess in the ministry after the Kadenova incident. Polotova, 24.kg reported, took business trips to Lithuania (twice), Hungary, and Thailand in the past year alone.

The Ministry of Labor and Social Development serves Kyrgyzstan’s neediest citizens — low-income families, people with disabilities, the unemployed, and children. The use of donor funds for ministry officials’ vacation travel — rather than programs to serve the public — is a cynical violation of the ministry’s mandate.

—

The Ministry of Labor and Social Development did not, however, hold a monopoly on scandals in recent weeks. The Kyrgyz Ministry of Foreign Affairs had its own share. On October 12, the Kyrgyz ambassador to South Korea, Kylychbek Sultan, was fired and Foreign Minister Erlan Abdyldaev resigned — a culling weeks, perhaps years, in the making.

Sultan, who assumed the top diplomatic post in Seoul in January after being appointed the previous October, had previously been ambassador to Malaysia from 2014 to 2016 and charge d'affaires there for part of 2017. Prior to his diplomatic career, Sultan was a media magnate as creator and owner of Super Media. In mid-September, 24.kg carried a report that Sultan had been trying to reach out to Jeenbekov with information on shortcomings in the foreign ministry. As 24.kg reported:

After [Sultan] publicly expressed his desire to meet with the head of state… Kyrgyz-language media outlets spread rumors that Super-Info newspaper works for ex-president Almazbek Atambayev and even was sold to him.

Less than a week later, Sultan ignored Bishkek’s orders to keep quiet about the Kadenova incident. Then on September 24, Sultan held a press conference at which he talked about corruption in the foreign ministry and his unsuccessful efforts to discuss the matter with the president. Sultan said that during his time as ambassador in Malaysia, he became aware of corruption in the embassy and the ministry. He said that the State Committee for National Security dispatched staff to investigate but never opened a case. “Then I reported this to the chairman of SCNS, but he resigned in a month. And the people involved in corruption still head the department and continue to work in the Foreign Affairs Ministry,” he said.

The next day, Abdyldaev — who has been foreign minister since 2012 — submitted a proposal to dismiss Sultan. The president waded into the matter at last, instructing the Security Council to look into Sultan’s allegations.

On October 11, the Security Council released the results of its preliminary investigation. The Security Council’s report took Sultan’s complaints of corruption in the foreign ministry and turned them back on the ambassador. “The check revealed the facts of flaws and violations by the Ambassador Kylychbek Sultan himself at the post of the head of the diplomatic mission in Malaysia and Korea,” 24.kg reported. The Security Council detailed a raft of corruption allegations against Sultan.

The next day Sultan was fired and Abdyldaev handed in his resignation, which was accepted.

Sultan denied the allegations directed at him by the Security Council and said he had evidence to prove himself. “The message of the Security Council is slander and lie. I can provide evidence on each item.” Sultan said he would not return to Kyrgyzstan and was seeking asylum abroad, though he declined to say in what country. “I am completely disappointed with the current government. I don't have any more trust in the authorities or the president, and I don't recognize such power in Kyrgyzstan,” Sultan said.

Speaking to 24.kg Sultan mentioned the young children of former Prime Minister Sapar isakov and one-time presidential hopeful Omurbek Tekebayev — both men are in jail, the former in pre-trial detention facing corruption charges and the latter on an eight-year sentence handed down for corruption in August 2017. “[Tekebayev] was convicted at the request of some crook. I also have a little daughter who is just beginning to talk, I want to be near her. But I will fight. I will return to Kyrgyzstan in 5-10 years and I will prove my case.”

—

The foreign ministry mayhem fits more closely into the Jeenbekov-Atambayev rift narrative. Abdyldaev served throughout most of Atambayev’s presidential tenure and through the first year of Jeenbekov’s. He was one of the highest-profile holdovers, largely due to the apolitical nature (in a domestic sense) of foreign affairs. The chaos in the Labor and Social Development ministry, meanwhile, reeks of average corruption in a little supervised corner of the country’s bureaucracy.

Whether these resignations and dismissals fit into the Jeenbekov-Atambayev rift depends, also, on how seriously one takes the Jeenbekov administration’s anti-corruption drive. Corruption is a monumental issue in Kyrgyzstan and has been since before independence.

According to Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index, Kyrgyzstan ranked at 135 out of 180 countries, just above the bottom quarter in terms of the perceived level of public sector corruption.

Much of Kyrgyzstan’s turbulent politics over the past quarter century has been tinged by shades of corruption. Both Askar Akayev and Kurmanbek Bakiyev — Kyrgyzstan’s first two presidents, ousted by revolutions in 2005 and 2010, respectively — were accused of a wide range of corrupt practices that helped turned the public against them.

But each purged cadre of corrupt officials has been followed by new corrupt officials. Bringing to justice corrupt officials of the Atambayev era is a good thing, but if they’re merely replaced by corrupt officials of the Jeenbekov era, there’s no actual progress on dealing with the pernicious issues undergirding corruption in Kyrgyzstan.