QURGHON TEPPA, April 22, 2014, Asia-Plus — Hearing over the case of the fertilizer factory, which is located in the Tajik southern province of Khatlon, will start soon.
“The hearing will start in the Khatlon Economic Court in Qurghon Teppa on April 28,” a source at the Khatlon Economic Court told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, parties to the trial have already been informed about the date of the beginning of the trial.
TojikAzot is partly state owned, with the government controlling a 25 percent stake in the troubled enterprise. Cypriot-registered Highrock Holdings Ltd, owned by Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, controls the remaining 75 percent of the enterprise.
The fertilizer plant has not been in operation since 2008 due to lack of natural gas supplies.
Until 2008, when neighboring Uzbekistan upped the price of natural gas, a key input for the factory, TojikAzot served as a foreign investment-success story for Tajikistan’s economy.
Tajikistan’s Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption last month announced an investigation into a 2002 deal between Dmitry Firtash and the Tajik government to create TojikAzot, a plant specializing in the production of carbamide, an organic compound used in fertilizer.
Tajik anticorruption agency says the deal was not concluded correctly and 75 percent of shares must be returned to the Tajik government. The anticorruption agency also accuses Firtash of untargeted use of means.
We will recall that Mr. Firtash, 48, one of Ukraine’s richest men with assets in media, banking, energy and agriculture, was arrested by the organized crime unit of the Austrian police in Vienna on March 12 after a US federal court issued an arrest warrant following an eight-year investigation by the FBI. An Austrian court set Firtash’s bail at a record 125 million euros, which he met on March 21.
