Chairman of the Customs Committee under Government of Tajikistan, Abdufattoh Ghoib, who headed the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption from 2009 to March 2015, has refused to have ties with the arrested anticorruption officers.
“I had worked with the anticorruption agency six years and those persons charged with committing crimes had worked with the agency before me. Thus, Firouz Kholmurodzoda was chief of department and Fakhriddin Bozorov was a senior investigator. The fact that I had worked with the agency several years does not mean that they are my staff,” Ghoib told reporters in Dushanbe on July 18.
He further added that two customs officers – Fakhriddin Bozorov and Faridoun Benazirzoda – had been detained for crimes they had committed while working with the anticorruption agency.
Ghoib also denied rumors that he had allegedly been questions during the detention of former anticorruption agencies as absolutely “unfounded.”
Recall, the Supreme Court head Shermuhammad Shohiyon said on July 17 that thirteen people, including ten anticorruption officers, will stand trial.
“Among the defendants are Firouz Kholmurodzoda, Davlatbek Khairzoda and some other former anticorruption officers. They are charged with bribery and fraud,” Shohiyon said, noting that the trial will be held behind closed doors. He refrained from giving further details.
As it had been reported earlier, more than 10 top investigators and officials of the anticorruption agency were arrested on April 24
Thus, a former deputy chief of the anticorruption agency, Davlatbek Khairzoda, was reportedly detained at the airport of the northern city of Khujand as he was on his way to Russia.
Among the detained officers there were also Jamoliddin Muhammadzoda, the head of the inspections department, and Firouz Kholmurodzoda, the chief of the investigative directorate. Firdavs Niyozbadalov was reportedly also arrested. He was involved in the investigation into the former minister of industry Zaid Saidov. Saidov’s lawyers and human rights activists had complained that Niyozbadalov used unlawful methods and resorted to physical intimidation during that investigation.
In his written reply to Asia-Plus inquiry letter, the chief of the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption, Sulaimon Sultonzoda, noted on May 24 that a special investigative group had been set up to investigate the case of the arrested anticorruption officers.
“Reports released by some media outlets that allegedly 35 million dollars were found in the home of Davlatbek Kharizoda’s parents, 1.3 million dollars and six kilograms of gold were found in Firouz Kholmurdozoda’s home and sacks of dollars and jewelries were discovered in the home of Firdavs Niyozbadalov (Abdughafforzoda) are absolutely baseless,” Sultonzoda said in his letter.
He also denied information that the medical certificate of the Moscow-based “Bio-Papa” lab regarding Zayd Saidov’s criminal case is falsified as unfounded.
Recall, the Prague-based website akhbor.com posted photos claiming to show a humungous trove of dollars being discovered in the family home of the one of the suspects, Khairzoda. As the website explained, the pictures have been widely circulated by mobile phone users in Tajikistan, as though that somehow constituted evidence of anything.
Meanwhile, EurasiaNEt.org reports that the photos, however, turned out not to be from Tajikistan at all, but of some other unspecified nation — possibly Ecuador.
Tajikistan ranked joint 136th out 165 countries in Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index — the same as Nigeria and 17 position below Russia.
Tajikistan signed up to the United Nations Convention against Corruption in 2006 and an anticorruption strategy for 2013-2020 was adopted in 2012.
