DUSHANBE, January Душанбе. 22 — Prosecutor-General’s Office has remitted the case of Marouf Oripov, director general of the Dushanbe company M&PГ, to the anticorruption agency for further inquiry, Sherkhon Salimov, director of the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption, remarked at a news conference in Dushanbe on January 21.
According to him, Oripov faces charges under three articles of Tajikistan’s Criminal Code: giving bribe; tax evasion and forgery.
We will recall that at first, the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) instituted criminal proceedings against Oripov last summer on charge of giving bribe, but later, the case was transferred to the anticorruption agency.
Oripov was detained in July 2007 when he was trying to give $10,000 in bribe to the GKNB investigator. Inspections carried out by the GKNB economic squad last July revealed that more than 1,500 tons of confectionery and other products beyond their shelf life were stored in the M&P warehouses in Dushanbe.
Speaking to journalists, the anticorruption agency chief also noted that the agency last year inspected 97 private companies and enterprises, and numerous instances of tax evasion were recorded.
According to him, the total damage caused by these violations is more than 24.2 million somonis (equivalent to some $7 million).
