Archive · 2008 · From the print edition of Monday 10 March 2008, Vol. 15, No. 4,693
BusinessWho Paid for Aulie-Ata?
The first of four parts. The ISEZ's private security contract of 2007 was not paid by the ISEZ. The Herald went looking for who did.
TALAS — On 12 March last year the ISEZ emergency administration and NurGaz signed a contract for "protective and training services" with Blackwater USA, of Moyock, North Carolina. For the next nine months its contractors, about 280 at the peak in August, guarded the oil fields, the Nurzhan refinery and the Northern Export Feeder, protected Erlan Toktarov and trained crews of the new State Defense Corps. The contract ended on 31 December.
The administration did not pay for it. The bill, the administration has confirmed, went to a body called the Chu Basin Security Fund. In this series the Herald sets out what can be found about that fund, and what cannot.
The fund exists. Its registration, which the Herald has obtained from the Texas authorities, shows that it was formed in Houston in March 2007, the same month as the contract, "to protect the export system and American property" in Irad. It lists a Houston law firm as its agent. It does not list its members. Asked who they are, the firm's lawyer said only that the fund acted for "clients who prefer privacy".
Bankers and businessmen in Talas say the fund was formed by American companies with territorial-era contracts in Irad's oil, power and telecommunications sectors. None of the companies the Herald approached would say whether it had contributed. Tomorrow: what the money bought, and why the question matters at Aulie-Ata.