Closed Joint-Stock Company Tajprombank (Tajik Joint-Stock Commercial Industrial Bank for Reconstruction and Development), which is one of Tajikistan’s distressed commercial banks, does not hurry up to pay out savings to its customers.
The customers complain that they cannot take their money from the bank, although it received 450 million somoni from the government at the beginning of this year. The bank security guards reportedly use brute physical force against the especially disaffected customers.
Tajprombank customers say they have got tired of visiting the bank’s head office in Dushanbe. According to them the bank top managers are just feeding them with empty hopes.
First-group invalid Mirzokhouja Samadov has told Asia-Plus that the bank employees beat him after he demanded payment of deposit interest.
Meanwhile, some customers say the bank pays deposits but only to acquaintances of the bank top managers.
Recall, former chairman and part owner of Tajprombank, Jamshed Ziyayev, was reinstated in December.
The Board of the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT) on December 13 gave him a monthly period to draw a plan to improve the financial situation in the bank.
Jamshed Ziyayev was squeezed out of CJSC Tajprombank in early May last year and the temporary crisis administration was appointed for the bank on May 3, 2016 for the period of three months. On August 3, 2916, the NBT extended the terms of powers of the crisis administration for another three months.
Founded in October 1995, Tajprombank, with headquarters in Dushanbe, has 22 branches, 11 departments and 15 money-transfer offices across the country.
The government last month issued bonds to the tune of around $490 million, which then went toward covering the more than $500 million cost of recapitalizing the banks.
Tojik Sodirot Bonk (TSB) got 2.25 billion somoni ($284 million at current exchange rates); Agroinvestbonk 1.7 billion somoni ($215 million); Tajprombank 450 million somoni ($56 million); and Fononbank a relatively meager 80 million somoni ($10 million).
Meanwhile, weeks after the government announced an ambitious bond issue to help finance a bailout for four troubled lenders, prosecutors have decided to start investigating the lenders.
The four banks being audited by the General Prosecutor’s Office are TSB, Agroinvestbonk, Tajprombank and state-owned Amonatbonk (Tajikistan’s savings bank).
RFE/RL’s Tajikistan Service reported that checks on the four banks are set to last six months. A representative for the General Prosecutor’s Office, Hotam Nazarzoda, said that the operation was being carried out at the request of the government to establish that the lenders were not being “mismanaged.”
