A state auction of personalized car license plates in Kyrgyzstan caused astonishment this week after one item sold for almost $25,000— a fortune in a country where the official average monthly salaries is $200.
Even the opening bidding prices at September 28 online auction were high. For example, the plate 01 001 ААА began from a price of 70,000 som ($1,000 USD), but eventually sold for 600,000 som ($8,800), newspaper Vecherny Bishkek reported. The most highly sought-after plate though was 01 777 ААА, which started from 60,000 som and was nabbed with the winning bid of more than 1.7 million som ($25,000).
A series on online sales have been taking place since September 21 with items of varying prestige value going to the highest bidder. Simple straightforward symmetrical numbers, like ones with the figure 121 in them, were sold at fixed prices. But the truly exclusive plates — triplicate figures like 555 are the most popular — drew the high rollers.
These auctions tend to draw high bids, but the record set this time around has shocked many, going by the evidence of the indignation being registered online.
Public relations specialist Yelena Voronina wrote on her Facebook page: “1.716 million som just for a car plate. In a country where there is no money for medicine or equipment for those sick with cancer…”
Others took a more mordantly bitter line.
“It’s a shame they couldn’t have sold 01 777 ААА for $4 billion. That way we could have paid off the national debt,” quipped Ernis Temirkan, an employee for the Sputnik Kyrgyzstan news agency.
There was also a lot of indignation under the news report about the auction. One commenter by the name “Gorozhan” wrote: “It would have been better if they had given this money to a children’s home or an old people’s home…”
The outrage fueled another would-be auction, this time aimed at less monied fellow Kyrgyz citizens.
“I know who bought the 777 license plate for almost two million. Let's have an auction. Whoever pays the most, I’ll tell them. What? How am I any worse than the owner of the plate?” wrote Asel Otorbayev, an editor for the 24.kg news agency.
Many were curious to know the name, but the bids were low.
But later in the day, 24.kg went ahead and revealed the buyer as Djurat Abdullayev — one of a duo of successful brother entrepreneurs who own a popular restaurant and food company Umut and Co. Most recently, the Abdullayev brothers bought a controlling share in a large bread-making company.
If this kind of clamor over expensive car plates is new for Kyrgyzstan, it is old hat for neighboring Kazakhstan. Still, it seems Kyrgyzstan is still out-blinging its richer neighbor, since according to a report in TengriNews website, VIP plate sales in Kazakhstan in 2016 have drawn prices of between 290,000 tenge ($865) and 480,000 tenge ($1,400).
Then again, as biweekly newspaper Vremya explained in an article earlier this year, the big spending in Kazakhstan is taking place mostly on the black market through the viper.kz website, where the super-exclusive plates drew figures far higher than those at official auctions. As Vremya suggested, the trade was not without a whiff of corruption.
The sale of VIP plates appears to have stopped (for now) on viper.kz, although there is still a brisk trade being done in easy-to-remember mobile phone numbers.
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