Author: Selma Farhi

The “Qatargate” scandal is only in its infancy. But it could go far beyond the case of the small Gulf emirate. L-POST.be was able to reveal, exclusively, that Pier-Antonio Panzeri, the former MEP at the center of the corrupt group was also a diligent lawyer for a former Kazakh oligarch, Muktar Ablyazov, who has just been rejected his status as an asylum seeker in France, the National Court for the Right of Asylum (CNDA) having established that he was not a real political refugee, but that he was not seeking this status to protect himself from lawsuits for a diversion of several…

Iranian state media report that the country’s Oil minister Javad Owji has been taken to hospital after suffering a heart attack. The emergency happened when Owji was attending a meeting to draft next year’s budget bill. A source at Iran’s Oil Ministry said Owji has been under great pressure during this period to increase oil sales. As the country is facing natural gas shortages amid the winter cold snap, Javad Owji has been at a dispatching center himself on Thursday to monitor the situation, the source has been quoted as saying. Owji is currently under treatment at a hospital and according to…

Anzhelika is one of many Russians who moved to the Turkish resort of Antalya after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but their arrival has driven up house prices and rents, prompting a local petition seeking a ban on foreigners in the real estate market. Some 13,000 people in the Mediterranean city have signed the petition since last month, worried that the big influx of foreigners – Ukrainians and others as well as Russians – means many Turks can no longer to afford to live there. “It is a bit sad that we are not wanted here while we cannot return to…

According to EastFruit analysts, prices for lemons in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have fallen to record lows and keep declining. “Even the retail price for lemons in Tajikistan has dropped to $0.5/kg – this has never happened before. Farmers are shocked – ripe lemons are left on the trees because there is no demand for them,” says Bakhtiyor Abduvokhidov, international consultant at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The situation is slightly better in neighboring Uzbekistan, where retail prices for lemons have already dropped below $1 per kg in some retail outlets, but the trend is disappointing for producers, too.…

The Kazakh National Center for Space Communication and Tajik Net Solutions company signed an agreement on Dec. 13. Kazakhstan will provide Tajikistan with satellite communication, reported Kazinform News Agency.The Kazakh side is ready to provide the transponder capacity of the KazSat-3 satellite in 2023. “The KazSat, satellite communication system, is capable of providing space communication services not only on the territory of Kazakhstan but also on the territory of neighboring states. Cooperation in this regard has already been established with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and now Tajikistan,” said Deputy Chairman of the National Center for Space Communication Management Board Vassiliy Leonov. He…