Tajikistan: The official’s bank account for $9 million was revealed
An international investigation into one of the largest and wealthiest banks in the world – “Secrets of Credit Suisse”, conducted by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), also revealed a Tajik account holder in Credit Suisse, the second largest bank in Switzerland.
We are talking about Kasym Kasymov, who now calls himself Kasym Rokhbar, the former Chairman of Sughd region and the former minister of agriculture of Tajikistan.
According to the authors of the investigation, in the period from 2004 to 2011, 8,883,230 Swiss francs [9,642,458 US dollars] were kept in a bank account in the name of Kasym Kasymov.
Keeping an account in a Swiss bank is, of course, not a crime, but journalists have a question about the sources of origin of such huge funds of a high-ranking official by the standards of Tajikistan. In addition, under Tajikistan’s anti-corruption legislation, Tajik officials were not allowed to keep money or purchase property outside the country.
Kasym Kasymov, also known as Kasym Rokhbar, was born in 1964. Until 1994, he headed the Regional Committee of the Komsomol organization of the country. In 1994, he was appointed head of Khujand district. From February 1996 to December 2006, he was the Chairman of Leninabad (since February 2000 – Sughd) region, as well as the representative of the President and Chairman of the Majlis [Senate] of people’s deputies of Sughd region. In 1995, he was elected a people’s deputy of Majlisi Oli and was a member of the Committee on Science, Education and Youth Policy. Since 2000, he was a member of Majlisi milli. From April 2005 to December 2006, he was the First Deputy Chairman of the Upper House of the Parliament of Tajikistan.
From December 6, 2006 to January 2008, Kasym Rokhbar headed the Sughd Executive Committee of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, but then he returned to power again – from 2008 to 2015 he was the Minister of Agriculture of Tajikistan.
Since 2015, he has been appointed Chairman of the Local Development Committee of Tajikistan under the President of Tajikistan, and in January 2022 he was appointed Chairman of the city of Gissar.
Journalists, who were investigating “Secrets of Credit Suisse”, called Kasym Rokhbar a close associate of Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, an official who for some time controlled one of the main sources of foreign exchange inflow into the country – cotton.
Journalists give an example from the biography of Kasym Rokhbar: at the final meeting of the government of Tajikistan for 2013, the head of the Ministry of Agriculture reported to the President on a record potato harvest of over 1 million tons. Two months after that, prices for domestic potatoes in the markets rose sharply, and a little later, local potatoes virtually disappeared, giving way to potatoes from Pakistan.
In WikiLeaks materials on the correspondence of American diplomats in 2008, Kasym Rokhbar was called a person with a dubious past.
