Grain Auction Leaves Rivals Outside the Gate

When the ISEZ administration auctioned the state grain elevators and feed mills of the Chu District last autumn, three companies submitted bids. Only one was allowed into the room.

Two bidders, a Nurzhan milling cooperative and a Kazakh-owned trading house, say their papers were rejected on the morning of the auction because their bank guarantees were dated in the wrong format. The auction protocol, which the Times has seen, records both rejections under the heading “non-conforming documentation”. It records one valid bid, at the reserve price, from the company that has since been renamed Nurzhan Agro-Industrial (NAI).

This month Bekzat Toktarov, the Governor’s son, returned from Tashkent to take charge of NAI.

The cooperative’s chairman, who asked not to be named because his members sell grain to NAI, said his guarantee was issued by Talasbank on the bank’s standard form. “The bank wrote the date the way the bank writes dates,” he said. The trading house said it had written to the administration twice and received no reply.

The ISEZ administration said the sale “followed the privatization law in every respect” and that bidders were responsible for their documents. Opposition deputies have asked for the auction to be re-run. NAI said it had paid the full price and intended to modernise the mills.

NAI now owns every state elevator in the Chu District. Farmers there sell to it or carry their grain to Nurzhan.