As the price of oil drops and Kazakh government revenues shrink, the government has begun a more stringent evaluation of its energy sector. It was announced yesterday that oil treatment facilities and refineries that work with Russian gasoline suppliers will need to be closed due to low or even negative profit margins. Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister…
Law enforcement officials at the FBI announced that they have disrupted an alleged Russian-led spy ring operating out of New York City suburbs. The spy ring is purported to have been led by several different Russian agents operating under diverse identities in and around New York City, and that their activities included alleged attempts to…
The most underdeveloped economies of Central Asia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, both have relied heavily on Chinese investment but throughout 2014 Chinese FDI throughout Kyrgyzstan has dropped some 35%. The main influencing factors have been the decision to join the EEU and the constantly changing political leadership in Bishkek. Although some good news has come out…
Regional hydroelectricity project CASA-1000 has secured another leg of financing. Tajikistan, one of the proposed deal’s signatories, had struggled for several months to pay for power transmission lines that would traverse its territory, stifling the deal and casting doubt on the project’s ultimate success. Several international bodies, including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,…
The Iranian oil ministry has declared itself ready and able to cope with oil prices should they reach $25/barrel. Tehran had previously allied itself with countries such as Venezuela whose economies depend heavily on hydrocarbons profit to function, though the most recent diplomatic offensive appears to have failed to have the desired effect. Bijan Namdur…
Iranian and Russian officials inked a new cooperation deal this past Tuesday. The agreement has a two-tier focus, the first of which is military, whilst the other is technological. The military aspect was signed off on by the two countries’ respective defense ministers, and was seemingly engineered to counter a perceived threat posed by the…
Russia’s Central Bank has announced it will use credit ratings of lenders before March 1 of last year (2014) in determining its capital requirements, artificially easing pressure on debt ridden Russian companies struggling for refinancing. Without access to Western capital markets, companies have either been forced to accept egregiously high interest rates from non-Western banks,…
The Ukrainian military announced that its forces have successfully regained control of the Donetsk airport. The Ukrainian military has long laid siege to the airport, which for months has been the sight of intensive fighting between separatist militias and Ukrainian military. The latest spat of intense fighting has seemingly shaken the last bastions of separatist…
In December, we had the chance to talk with Eric Lorber, an attorney based in Washington, DC at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP who assists multinational companies in compliance with US economic sanctions. He was formerly a member of the Iran Sanctions Team at the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crime (OFAC) in the…
Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic claim to have captured the Donetsk city airport, although officials in Kiev deny these reports. If true, the claim would signal the first significant territorial advance by the rebels since signing the cease-fire pact. The pact has mostly been considered a nominal one, with near-daily violations…
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