Tajik authorities have failed to sell the Dushanbe-based Closed Joint-Stock Company (CJSC) Guliston (clothing factory) for already third year. Although the starting price of the enterprise was brought down, there were no buyers.
Recall, CJSC Guliston was put on auction again in December last year.
According to the State Committee on Investments and State-owned Property Management (GosKomInvest), a full package of shares totaling 242,000 shares was put on auction as one lot on December 18, 2018 and the initial price was set at 24.220 million somoni (equivalent to some 2.6 million U.S. dollars).
The factory had already been put on auction twice – in September 216 and January 2017, and the initial price had been set at 32 million somoni (equivalent to more than 4 million U.S. dollars). However, potential buyers had not shown interest in the factory.
Dushanbe’s Economic Court invalidated privatization of the Guliston clothing factory on April 2, 2014 on the basis of a suit filed by the anticorruption agency.
The court ruled that the enterprise must be handed over to the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies.
The clothing factory was privatized in 2002, when jailed Tajik tycoon Zayd Saidov was Minister of Industry of Tajikistan and, according to the anticorruption agency, Zayd Saidov allegedly promoted illegal privatization of the enterprise using his official status
Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry V. Firtash assumed the 95% ownership interest and Zayd Saidov’s son, Khairullo Saidov, owned 5 percent of shares in this enterprise.