Tajik official, who was arrested in late September last year for taking a half-million dollar bribe, has got a lengthy jail term.
A court in Dushanbe’s Ismoili Somoni district has sentenced Askar Nouralizoda, the deputy head of the Main Directorate for Investment and Development of Regions at the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, to eleven years in prison, a source in Dushanbe city court told Asia-Plus in an interview Thursday afternoon.
The sentence followed conviction of Nouralizoda on charges of extorting bribe and large-scale bribery (Article 319 (4) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code).
The sentence was reportedly passed on January 10.
According to information posted on the anticorruption agency’s official website, Askar Nouralizoda requested a US$1 million bribe and a three-room apartment for his wife Savrinisso Kholiqova from a resident of the Jaloliddini-Balkhi district (Khatlon province) in exchange for including the development of poultry production in the district in the 2016-2020 state investment program.
That resident of the Jaloliddini-Balkhi district reportedly promised to give US1 million to Nouralizoda if he help him receive a US10 million grant for the poultry production development program
Nouralizoda was reportedly caught red-handed on September 28 last year while taking a US$490,000 bribe.
Besides, investigators found 10,000 U.S. dollars in his home.
