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The Regions This Week
September 8, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 9
Eurasia
Canada's Centerra Gold and Kyrgyzstan reached a drafted settlement on Kumtor gold mine en- vironmental lawsuits served on each other. They have been locked in a dispute over profit-sharing. Centerra shares, listed in Toronto, peaked at a four-year high on news of the deal.
The Guardian revealed a $2.9bn money launder- ing scheme involving the Azerbaijani govern- ment, opaque Azerbaijani companies, the Russian government, and four UK-registered companies. The "laundromat" slush fund formula was used
to pay for public relations for the government of Azerbaijan and for a number of luxury services and goods for its elites, it claimed. First lady and Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva is allegedly con- nected to one shady company involved.
Iran’s Mazandaran Ports and Maritime Organi- sation finished a feasibility study on creating eight new Caspian Sea coast seaside resorts. The region’s is popular with Tehran residents for short breaks and prior to the 1979 revolution it boasted five-star hotels including a Hyatt. Melia is in the finishing stages of building a large hotel on the coast and Marriott says it would like to return there if US sanctions are lifted.
The brother of now stateless ex-Georgian presi- dent Mikheil Saakashvili, David Saakashvili, was arrested in Ukraine on cancelled residence permit grounds. He faces likely deportation to Georgia. Mikheil Saakashvili called the move an attempt to intimidate him into not travelling to Georgia. He wants to challenge Tbilisi which he says intends to accuse him of plotting a coup d'etat.
France’s Alstom is to invest €1.2bn in Iran’s Arak Pars Railway Wagon company. The Eurostar and TVG maker will be lead partner in a joint venture which will build 1,000 metro and suburban rail carriages.
Residents have been “forcibly evicted” from selected areas of the Turkmen capital Ashgabat
prior to the 5th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG), the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights (TIHR) in Vienna and New York-based Hu- man Rights Watch (HRW) said.
Tajikistan agreed on mutual exchanges of secu- rity intelligence with China during a state visit by Tajik President Emomali Rahmon to Beijing. China is looking to protect its massive investments in the One Belt One Road trade infrastructure initiative.
Iranian mining officials said they discovered
an iron ore deposit of more than 2bn tonnes in central Yazd province. Official estimates show Iran possesses 7% of total discovered worldwide min- eral reserves, with an estimated worth of about $700bn. They include the world’s largest deposits of iron ore, copper and zinc.
Armenia's consumer prices rose 0.9% y/y in Au- gust, the same pace recorded for July. On a month- ly basis, they rose 3% following a 2.6% decrease in July. Economic growth picked up from 0.2% in 2016 to 6.2% in the first seven months of this year.
The Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union and Mongolia may conclude a free trade zone agree- ment as early as 2018, Russian Natural Resourc- es Minister Sergey Donskoy said.
GDP for 1Q of the Iranian calendar year (started March 21) was posted at 6.5% y/y, by the Sta- tistical Centre of Iran (SCI). The non-oil economy expanded by 7% while the oil sector grew 4.6%. The central bank sometimes issues GDP figures that conflict with those of SCI.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said the Astana International Financial Centre “must start working” immediately after the September 15 end of the capital’s Expo international fair. The AIFC is a financial services hub to be run as a free economic zone modelled on Dubai’s International Financial Centre. The centre, complete with a new bourse, was originally meant to launch as part of the Expo.