The president of Kyrgyzstan has carried out a shake-up of the Cabinet, ditching a pair of ministers currently under criminal investigation in the process.

President Sadyr Japarov’s office said on October 3 that Culture Minister Azamat Zhamankulov and Transport Minister Erkinbek Osoyev resigned of their own volition. Energy Minister Doskul Bekmurzayev and Education Minister Almazbek Beishenaliyev, meanwhile, were fired as they are currently the objects of a bribery investigation.

The reshuffle attests to some level of disarray within the Kyrgyz government, which has been bedeviled by a rash of corruption scandals and infighting.

Curiously, several ministers have been able to hold onto their jobs – some of them for weeks on end – despite facing accusations from prosecutors of involvement in illegal financial machinations.

The Prosecutor General's Office said on September 13 that it was investigating Bekmurzayev on suspicion of defrauding a private company of 15 million som ($183,000) during the refurbishment of a resort complex. Ownership of the resort was in May handed to utilities companies Electric Stations, which is in turn owned by the Energy Ministry. Despite this ongoing probe, Bekmurzayev managed to nominally remain in charge of his ministry for almost three weeks.

Beishenaliyev was not so successful in keeping his post as head of the Education Ministry. He was detained on September 28, when a court ruled that he should remain in jail for a minimum two-month period pending investigations into claims that he extorted a $110,000 bribe to enroll foreign nationals in local universities. That means the Education Ministry was on paper run for only five days by an official sitting behind bars.

But few have managed to hold out as long as Alymkadyr Beishenaliyev (no relation to the former Education Minister). That Beishenaliyev was arrested in his office in early June by a dozen rifle-toting and masked officers with the security services and the office of the Prosecutor General. He was later charged on seven counts, including corruption, bribe-taking and abuse of office. Japarov only got around to firing him from his job as Health Minister on August 19.

Another recent high-profile target of the increasingly forceful prosecutor’s office was Tengiz Bolturuk, a long-time close ally of Japarov. When state officials wrested control of the giant Kumtor goldmine from Canada-based investors in May 2021, Bolturuk was tapped as the state-appointed external manager for the mine. He later took the helm of a brand-new government holding called Great Nomads Heritage, which emerged to become arguably the most important player in the national extractive industry.  

It has since all gone wrong. Bolturuk and two of his underlings were detained on September 13 on suspicion of financial misconduct.

In some of these cases, the victims of the prosecutor’s investigations have sought to claim that they were singled out on the basis of personal enmity.

When Bekmurzayev was arrested, he told Kaktus news website that he believed he was the victim of a personal vendetta waged by Prosecutor General Kurmankul Zulushev. In defending himself from the accusations of prosecutors, Beishenaliyev, the former Health Minister, likewise accused Zulushev of acting out of animosity toward him.