Page 6 - BNE_magazine_05_2019

6 I The Month That Was bne May 2019
Politics
Eastern Europe
US fund manager Michael Calvey has been released from pre-trial detention by the Moscow’s Basmanny Court and placed under house arrest. Russia’s most famous fund manager Calvey and sev- eral of his colleagues from Baring Vostok Capital Partners (BVCP) were arrested after the Federal Security Service (FSB) opened an investigation into the fund.
Ukraine has lost the dispute in the World Trade Organization (WTO)
over Russia's restrictive measures on the transit transportation of merchandise by road and rail, introduced in. 2014-2016. According to a WTO special panel, Russia did not violate WTO rules by limiting the transit of Ukrainian goods through its territory.
Ihor Kolomoisky, Ukraine's oligarch and former co-owner of the nation's largest lender PrivatBank, is going to seek $2bn of compensation from the nation's government for illegal nationali- sation of the lender in late 2016.
Moscow's Basmanny District Court has sanctioned the arrest in absentia of the former Ukrainian Defence Min- ister and the presidential candidate Anatoliy Hrytsenko, who is charged with "public calls for terrorism", after he called for “blowing up Russian trains.”
Central Europe
Estonia’s Reform party, which won the election in early March, failed to secure a parliamentary majority, the vote’s result now opening a possibility for the runner- up Centre party to bid for power. Centre looks certain to secure a majority in the Riigikogu, having already agreed coalition terms with far right EKRE and Fatherland.
Media owner and television presenter Jaromir Soukup announced he will run in the next presidential elections in the Czech Republic to be held in 2023, Hospodarske Noviny reported.
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“I am really serious about it,” said Sou- kup, though many observers dismissed the announcement as a PR stunt.
An estimated 80% of Poland’s public schools and kindergartens went on strike following the fiasco of last-ditch pay negotiations between teacher unions and the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party on the previous day. The strike is the biggest since the early 1990s in the chronically underpaid education sector.
Slovakia’s parliament approved scrap- ping a special levy for retail chains as proposed by the Slovak National Party (SNS) in fast-track legislative proceed- ings, submitted in reaction to a prelimi- nary ruling to suspend Slovakia’s appli- cation of a levy issued by the European Commission.
Southeast Europe
Serbia will take countermeasures against Kosovo if Pristina fails to revoke 100% tariffs imposed on imports of Serbian products by May 6, media cited President Aleksandar Vucic. Kosovo introduced 100% tariffs on goods from Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina in November 2018, after Belgrade thwarted Pristina’s bid to join Interpol.
North Macedonia’s authorities declared a measles epidemic through- out the country in an attempt to prevent a further spreading of the disease. Since the first cases were reported in Decem- ber 2018, the outbreak of measles has claimed several victims so far due to complications from the infection.
North Macedonia’s government will rename the Philip II football stadium in line with the name deal with Greece. This was the latest renaming after the govern- ment in Skopje signed a deal with Greece in June 2018. The Philip II arena will be renamed National Arena Tose Proeski after the late Macedonian singer who died in a car crash in 2007 at the age of 26.
Police killed one of three gunmen in
a shootout after the audacious theft of €10mn from a plane at Albania’s Tirana international airport. Armed robberies are not uncommon at Tirana airport. Several incidents on a smaller scale happened in the last three years.
Eurasia
The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers agreed to push on with efforts to end the conflict over Azerbai- jan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, but no major progress appeared to be made after they met in Moscow on April 15. Both foreign ministers "reaf- firmed the intention of the parties to con- tinue their efforts to resolve the Nagorno- Karabakh conflict through political and diplomatic means," a statement posted on the OSCE website said.
The Instagram accounts of several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders were blocked with the photo-sharing website saying it was complying with US sanctions, Tabnak news website reported. The US recently added the IRGC to its list of foreign terrorist organisations.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged Tash- kent to remove centrally mandated pro- duction quotas on cotton, which continue to fuel forced labour within Uzbekistan at least on certain local levels. The Uzbek government has taken multiple steps to end forced labour in its cotton sector,
yet elements persist as local governments rely on it to meet quotas demanded by central government officials.