Tag Archives: Uzbekistan

Uzbek Civil Society on the Hazards of Investing in Kleptocracies

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Tonight Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev will tout the benefits of investing in his country to executives of multinational firms at a swank dinner at the Onyx Room in mid-town Manhattan.  He will point to measures the government has taken since the death last year of its first president, renowned kleptocrat lslam Karimov, to open the country to foreign investment — from reforms to economic policy to steps to improve its atrocious human rights record.  But before they open their checkbooks, the execs will want to heed the warnings contained in a letter Uzbek civil society activities just sent Washington lawyer Carolyn Lamm, chair of the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce, the host of tonight’s get-together.

Reprinted below, the letter cautions that there are still many signs that Uzbekistan has yet to shed its kleptocratic past, from the appointment of one of the most notorious kleptocrats of the previous regime as prime minister to the rise to power of Mirziyoyev’s sons-in-law.  The authors remind Ms Lamm and the members of her organization what happened to those who invested in Karimov’s kleptocracy.  Not only did their investments turn out to be a bust, but the bribes the investors had to pay to do business have cost them (or more accurately their shareholders) dearly.  One firm was fined $795 million by Dutch and American authorities and a second recently told shareholders it anticipates paying over $1 billion to resolve the case against it.

The authors sent a copy of their letter to the members of Ms Lamm’s organization, a group that includes General Electric,  General Motors, Boeing, Catepillar, Coca-Cola, Honeywell, Visa, and other well-know, well-respected companies traded on American stock exchanges (and thus subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act). Readers holding shares in any of these companies will want to ensure company executives pay careful attention to the letter’s warnings.

Ms Carolyn Lamm
Chair
American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce
601 13th St NW # 600S
Washington, D.C. 20005

September 18, 2017

An Open Letter to the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce regarding the Situation in Uzbekistan on the Eve of its Meeting with President Mirziyoev

Dear Chairwoman Lamm:

We, the undersigned Uzbek citizens and activists, write to you on the eve of your dinner with President Shavkat Mirziyoev on September 20, 2017, to express concern that your members may be misled into believing that meaningful reform is underway in our country. We ask you to share with them this letter explaining the current conditions in Uzbekistan and the risks any firm investing or doing business in the country will face. We further ask you to urge the President to reform the judiciary and create an independent, impartial and effective body to investigate allegations of corruption. Continue reading →

Will the Trump Administration Realize that Fighting Extremism Requires Fighting Corruption?

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That corruption breeds extremism is one of the abiding lessons of the last decade plus.  Whether it is Nigeria, Egypt, Somalia, Tunisia, Iraq, Afghanistan or Uzbekistan, allowing what a recent Carnegie Endowment report terms “acute, systemic” corruption to fester is the equivalent of putting out a welcome mat for extremists, home-grown and foreign. Eleven days after President Trump takes office, the world will see whether his national security team has absorbed this lesson.

January 31, 2017, is the day the Trump Administration must tell an American judge whether it will continue negotiations with the Government of Uzbekistan over the return $850 million in bribes paid in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act the Department of Justice has frozen.  Following a Bush Administration policy continued by the Obama Administration, the U.S. government position has been that such funds should go back the country of origin only if:

  1. the government take steps to curb grand corruption and
  2. the monies are used to improve the lives of ordinary citizens.

Candidate Trump called the FCPA a “horrible” law. On the 31st the world will see what that means in practice.  He could, as I explain here an article for the U.S. newspaper The Hill, tell the judge he has decided to turn the money over to the Uzbek government without strings.  That result would certainly show how horrible he thinks the FCPA is.  It would also ease the task the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Union, and the other radical groups in Central Asia have set of overthrowing the endemically corrupt Uzbek government.

Will the Trump Administration realize that fighting extremism requires fighting corruption? Visit this blog February 1 for at least the first answer to the question.

Sua Sponte Corruption Inquiries by Arbitral Tribunals: Causing More Harm than Good?

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As several prior posts on this blog have discussed (see here, here, and here), corruption has emerged as a significant and controversial issue in international investor-state arbitration proceedings, with a number high-profile cases in which the tribunal refuses to provide relief on the grounds that the underlying contract was procured through corruption. In these cases, corruption allegations usually surface at the initiative of one of the parties. For example, this summer, Djibouti filed an arbitration against Dubai-owned port operator DP World, seeking annulment of a port concession because DP World allegedly formed its contract with Djibouti for the operation of Africa’s largest container terminal through corrupt means. However, in rare instances, corruption can enter the picture without either party raising the issue during the proceedings. In these cases, the arbitral tribunal considers the issue of corruption sua sponte, even when neither party alleges corruption by the other.

Perhaps the most prominent example of this is the tribunal’s decision in Metal-Tech v. Uzbekistan. In Metal-Tech, the ICSID tribunal, in its words, “required explanations” from the parties for suspicious facts that “emerged in the course of the arbitration”–in particular the fact that Metal-Tech had paid exorbitant, seemingly unjustifiable sums for consulting services to an Uzbeki government official and individuals with close ties to Uzbeki leadership. The ICSID tribunal then essentially placed the burden of disproving corruption in light of this circumstantial evidence on Metal-Tech, which could not come up with enough evidence to overcome the tribunal’s presumption. The ICSID tribunal held it did not have jurisdiction and dismissed Metal-Tech’s claim.

On the surface, sua sponte efforts by tribunals to address corruption may seem like a positive step in the anticorruption fight. Indeed, it might seem irresponsible for the tribunal to stick its head in the sand given such facially suspicious facts. As Michael Hwang and Kevin Lim assert in a recent paper endorsing this sua sponte practice, “Tribunals must remain vigilant and alert to the possibility of corrupt dealings being hidden by one or both parties, otherwise they may become unwitting accessories to heinous acts.” But in fact, the approach adopted by the tribunal in Metal-Tech, might do more harm than good. Indeed, by engaging in sua sponte considerations of corruption, arbitral tribunals might unwittingly perpetuate corruption under several different scenarios: Continue reading →