Tajik fuel supply company Umed-88 has fallen into disgrace and its top managers have reportedly fled the country.
The company fell into disgrace after President Emomali Rahmon harshly criticized it at a meeting with entrepreneurs in Dushanbe on October 14.
Tajik leader, in particular, noted that Umed-88 had somehow managed to receive a 170 million loan from the national budget at the annual interest rate of 18 percent.
“It is already the fourth year that the company has not yet repaid this loan,” Rahmon noted (for comparison, the weighted average interest rate for loans in the national currency is 30.46 percent – Asia-Plus).
The president ordered to bring those guilty to justice.
After the president’s statement, the company signboards have begun disappearing from the refueling stations belonging to Umed-88.
People at refueling stations say the stations now belong to another company. They refrain to name the new owner of the Umed-88 refuel stations.
The Umed-88 head office, which is located in Dushanbe’s Sino district (behind the Abu Ali Sino monument), is sealed.
People close to the company say its owner Rajabali Odinayev and his son Umed Odinayev have already left the country. They are reportedly now in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The Tajik law enforcement authorities neither confirmed nor denied this information.
Umed-88 had been engaged in supplying fuels to Tajikistan and selling oil products in the country for more than twenty years. It had more than 70 refueling stations across Tajikistan.
Until this year, Umed-88 along with Gapromneft-Tajikistan, Tajik Petroleum and Aurum Spika had been on the list of companies dominating Tajikistan’s fuel market. This year, the company was removed from the list as its share on the fuel market of Tajikistan fell.
