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Eurasia
September 7, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 23
said it was laying off 175 of its 2,400-plus- strong staff. In a letter addressed to staff, the company founders said Digikala faced havoc generated by the devaluation of the Iranian rial, the falling purchasing power of Iranians, supply chain problems, the drying up of imports, instability in planning and US sanctions.
Ex-Telia executives go on trial over bribes paid to Uzbekistan’s Karimova
Kanat Shaku in Almaty
Lars Nyberg, a former CEO of Nordic telecom operator Telia, and two other defendants have gone on trial in Sweden over allegations that $350mn was paid to Gulnara Karimova in return for the “protection” of the Uzbek government and access to Uzbekistan’s telecoms market.
The trio of executives were charged in September last year after the Stockholm-based company agreed to pay $1bn in penalties to settle a long- running corruption probe into how bribes were paid to entities connected to Karimova, the dis- graced daughter of Uzbekistan’s late ex-president Islam Karimov, to win licences to operate 3G and 4G services. Telia, as well as Russian companies VimpelCom (later renamed to VEON) and MTS, were accused of paying the bribes. VimpelCom was fined $795mn by the US and Dutch authori- ties for the bribes it paid in Uzbekistan.
The Stockholm court on September 4 ordered Telia's current CEO, Johan Dennelind, to testify under oath at the trial.
The closing arguments by lawyers are scheduled to be heard from December 11-14.
With the US offering very few concessions in its targeting of Iran with heavy sanctions and the Iranian government placing an import ban on more than 1,300 goods deemed to be “luxury” in order to curb hard currency outflows, several imports popular with middle-class Iranians are now absent from the shelves.
In June, Karimova’s lawyer said she was detained in a prison located outside Uzbek capital Tashkent.
September 4 also saw Dutch bank ING agree to pay fines and other payments worth €775mn for “serious shortcomings” in executing policies that would prevent financial crime. One crime was a bribe paid by VimpelCom to an Uzbek company, Dutch prosecutors said in a statement.
While Dutch investigators found no evidence of ING helping its customers in potential criminal activities, prosecutors detailed several examples where ING accounts were used in committing crimes. They included the transfer of “bribes worth millions of dollars [by VimpelCom] via its bank accounts with ING to a company owned by the daughter of a former Uzbek president".
The Amsterdam-based bank said it regretted mistakes that allowed customers to use their accounts for money laundering and corrupt practices between 2010 and 2016. It was fined €675mn and agreed to pay another €100mn as a “disgorgement” payment.
Karimova was for years seen as her father’s heir until she was found to be the central figure in international corruption investigations. Court