DUSHANBE, March 31, 2015, Asia-Plus — An officer at the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) has been detained on suspicion of bribe taking.
The Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption said on March 31 that Asadullo Sharifzoda, an officer at the SCNS’s office in Dushanbe’s Ismoili Somoni district, is suspected of accepting 2,000 U.S. dollars in exchange for dropping charges against a detainee.
“Sharifzoda demanded 5,000 U.S. dollars in exchange for dropping charges brought against A.V. and he was caught red-handed while taking 2,000 U.S. dollars from his relatives,” an official source at the anticorruption agency told Asia-Plus in an interview.
Criminal proceedings have been instituted against Asadullo Sharifzoda and an investigation is under way, the source added.
According to him, the president’s son, Rustam Emomali, who was appointed to head the anticorruption agency on March 16, has signed an order on assessing the level of professionalism of all the employees of the anticorruption agency. A commission has reportedly been set up to conduct the review process.
We will recall that two senior officials at the Tajik Drug Control Agency (DCA) were detained on March 19. The DCA investigative department chief Saymukhtor Bekov and the DCA operative-search department chief Ergash Malikov reportedly accepted tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for re-qualifying charges brought against a suspect.
