By Diloram Ismailov
Soon Kyrgyzstan will remember the victims of one of the most terrible tragedies in the history of the country. 39 people, including 17 children were killed under the wreckage of a cargo Boeing 747-400 crashed near capital of Kyrgyzstan – Bishkek.
Moreover Kyrgyz people will remember how in those tragic days the former President of Kyrgyzstan – Almazbek Atambayev did not come out to the people, did not express condolences. And only the most meticulous know why Atambayev, who always speaks about his care for every citizen from high tribunes, ignored the tragedy – he went into drinking binge. Atambayev was disappointed not by the death of the Kyrgyz, but by the loss of 85 tons of contraband cargo, which the ill-fated Boeing was carrying for him.
On January 16, 2017, the Boeing 747-400, which flew from Hong Kong to Bishkek did not reach only one mile to the international airport Manas in the capital of Kyrgyzstan. The plane fell on a village in the vicinity of the airport, destroying 32 houses.
At that time the leaders of many countries expressed their condolences to the people of Kyrgyzstan. And only one person was silent – the leader of the Republic Almazbek Atambayev.
Much later the main reason for such a strange behavior of the president of the country became clear – he was in a drinking bout. Atambayev was simply frightened that the broken Boeing would reveal many dark deeds, behind which is the president who had pulled himself into the mask of the democrat.
When emergency services began to analyze the debris on the spot of the tragedy it turned out that 85 tons of cargo that were on Boeing board were smarts and tablets. And all this cargo was not reflected in the documents, but it was very much expected in Bishkek.
The Kyrgyz authorities tried to declare that the cargo was owned by Turkey and that the flight THY 6491, registered with the company “Turkish Airlines”, had to sit in Bishkek just for refueling. However, this version was refuted by the results of the analysis of the crash site. It turned out that the fuel in the Boeing tanks was more than enough to make a non-stop flight to Istanbul, as official Bishkek said.
But the plane belonged to another Turkish airline – “My Cargo Airlines”, whose services were often used by business partners of Atambaev. By the way, after the accident the representative of the airline confirmed to the media that the broken liner was going to the airport “Manas” for unloading cargo and said that their company’s aircraft had already carried 52 flights from China to Kyrgyzstan.
To assess the volume of even smuggled in a plane crash you can perform elementary mathematical calculations. One iPhone (namely it was on board) in a whole package weighs about 400 grams. 85 tons – is 212 500 smartphones of the brand iPhone. If you calculate that one iPhone 6 or 6S (they were the most popular goods in January last year) costed at least $ 500 at retail, the cost of the whole cargo would be at least $ 106.25 million! Minus the price of the purchase (that is, about 40 percent of this amount) and get almost $ 64 million net profit.
The nature of the flight and the documents issued for the cargo (or rather, their total absence) indicates that the owners of the goods did not intend to declare it. This is hinted at by the fact that the cargo owners never showed up in Kyrgyzstan or Turkey, which was announced a couple of days later by Kyrgyzstan’s Minister of Transport Zhamshitbek Kalilov. And this means only one thing – the business was under protect the most influential person in Kyrgyzstan – the President of the Republic Almazbek Atambayev, who really did not want the public inside and outside the country to know about smuggling.
However in Kyrgyzstan, the deputy of the Jogorku Kenesh (Parliament) Omurbek Tekebayev decided to conduct his own investigation of the cargo belonging. He even went to Europe to find evidence for his suspicions. And, apparently, he was found – he was charged with fraud and corruption and was arrested immediately after arriving in Bishkek from Vienna right at the airport. The Central Election Commission of Kyrgyzstan quickly deprived the deputy of immunity and already in August 2017 the court sentenced him to 8 years in prison. And just the other day thieves who stole the only thing-a folder with documents on his case-climbed into the house of the lawyer Tekebaev. Apparently, this daddy also had information, including on the plane crash of January 2017.
Today the only ones who could tell a lot about who is behind the burnt cargo are the Chinese sellers of the goods. But the Chinese acted wiser – they with compromising evidence on Atambaev “persuaded” him to agree to the project of building the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway lobbied by the PRC. And on the extremely unfavorable for Bishkek conditions – Beijing gets ownership of the land under the railway, the railway itself and dozens of mineral deposits.
And here’s another interesting fact. If the previous nearly 15 years China tried to persuade Kyrgyzstan on this project, the cost of building a branch across the territory of the Republic was estimated at about $ 2 billion, which Beijing intended to spend out of its own resources, but now A. Atambayev announced his intention to take credit from China (!) in the amount of 6 billion US dollars for the construction of this road.
So it turns out that the outgoing President of the Kyrgyz Republic has earned billions of dollars in smuggling and selling the wealth of his homeland and the Kyrgyz people have to pay for pseudo-democrat “business projects”.