Page 16 - bne monthly magazine October 2022

16 I Companies & Markets bne October 2022
Kyrgyzstan: Kumtor, cloak and dagger Eurasianet
"It’s a secret” is becoming a catchphrase to describe how Kyrgyzstan is currently being administered, especially as concerns the giant gold mine that authorities seized
last year in the name of a long-suffering public.
To begin, the sudden fall off in reporting on activities at the economically vital Kumtor mine was easily explained away.
Kyrgyzstan’s government was locked in a legal dispute with Toronto-listed Centerra Gold, Kumtor’s operator prior to the sudden imposition of “external management” – code for nationalisation – in May 2021.
Making information about the mine public would have given Centerra the upper hand, top officials argued at the time.
But that legal standoff was settled amicably and for good in July of this year, while Kumtor is still a high-altitude shrine to opacity.
One of the biggest concerns is the mixed messages coming from the top leadership.
Last September, Kyrgyzstan’s national security chief Kamchybek Tashiyev boasted in a public appearance that
“not a gram” of gold produced at Kumtor had left the country that year.
His claim did not tally with data from the national statistics committee, which showed gold had continued to be Kyrgyzstan’s chief export.
In fact, committee data released this July revealed that Kyrgyzstan had exported record quantities of gold – 24.8 tonnes – in 2021.
But the committee did not account for where the vast majority of this bounty had been sold, referring to an “undefined country” as the purchaser of 19.2 tonnes, or 77%.
Switzerland is well-known as a longstanding destination for Kumtor’s gold, and sure enough, Swiss trade statistics confirm that was where the gold had been received.
So why the secrecy?
In an interview last month with state media outlet Kabar, President Sadyr Japarov said that the identity of the importing country had been classified “for the security of the delivery.”
The president eyeing the gold back in January. / Government handout.
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