A vast smuggling ring is exposed in Kyrgyzstan, to popular outrage
Dec 5th 2019THE VICTIM was a Chinese citizen. He was shot in a gangland-style killing in Istanbul, the biggest city in Turkey. But the smuggling racket on which he had just blown the whistle was centred on Kyrgyzstan, a poor Central Asian country of 6m which has been a transit point between China and Europe for centuries.Aierken Saimaiti said his part in the racket had been to launder the proceeds, overseeing the removal from Kyrgyzstan of at least $700m in dirty money between 2011 and 2016. Kyrgyz officials have since admitted that Saimaiti and his associates funnelled nearly $1bn to banks in a dozen countries. (Kyrgyzstan’s GDP last year was $8bn.) Before his assassination last month he told journalists from Kloop, a Kyrgyz website, Radio Free Europe, an American-funded news outlet, and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a charity, that he had done so with the connivance of Kyrgyz officials. Ordinary Kyrgyz are asking how such a huge scam could have occurred under two presidents who styled themselves as corruption-busters.Choose us for news analysis that respects your time and intelligenceSubscribe to The EconomistWe filter out the noise of the daily news cycle and analyse the trends that matterWe give you rigorous, deeply researched and fact-checked journalism. That’s why Americans named us their most trusted news source in 2017Available wherever you are—in print, digital and, uniquely, in audio, fully narrated by professional broadcastersThis website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard‘s standards of credibility and transparency.ORContinue reading this articleRegister with an email address