The mysterious tale of Manas's fuel contracts got the Washington Post front-page investigative treatment today, and while the broad contours of the piece will be familiar to those who have been following the story, there is plenty of good new information, too.
The piece includes an interview with one of the co-owners of Mina and Red Star, 35-year-old Kyrgyz Erkin Bekbolotov, apparently the first time he's spoken to the media. He says that rumors that his company is a CIA front have been helpful:
Bewildered - and also jealous - competitors whisper that the companies are perhaps the Afghan conflict's version of Air America, a nominally private airline run covertly by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Vietnam War.
"Everyone thinks I'm CIA," said Bekbolotov, noting that "this image has been very helpful" as it curbs "harassment by Kyrgyz officials or people close to them." But Bekbolotov insists it is not true.
"I'd like this image to continue," he said, "but attention is so intense we need to dispel the myth."
The piece also suggests that the White House and Pentagon are at odds on how to go forward with the fuel deals:
The White House, alarmed by the unintended consequences of the fuel deals, is pushing for greater transparency, said a senior administration official. "There has been a giant fight with [U.S. Central Command] over this," said the official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The mystery of where exactly Mina and Red Star are located remains unsolved:
Mina and Red Star have little of the visible infrastructure usually associated with an enterprise handling billions of dollars of business. At an address in Gibraltar used by both Red Star and Mina is a law firm that specializes in "virtual office services." Mina's London office consists of a small glassed-in cubicle. An address in Toronto that Red Star used to win its first Pentagon contract turns out to be a business center in a high-rise tower.
Bekbolotov, Mina and Red Star's general manager, said the two companies have other offices and a total staff of about 450. He wouldn't detail where they are, citing security concerns.
Bekbolotov said the companies are creating a management structure "along standard lines," centered on a Dubai office that opened in January under the name Mina Petroleum. A woman who answered the door there, however, denied working for Mina and said she knew nothing about the company.
And perhaps most remarkably, Bekbolotov said he met with Kyrgyzstan President Roza Otunbayeva's son to try to get him involved. And it doesn't sound like Mom is too happy about it:
Mina then tried another approach: In July, Bekbolotov, Edelman's partner, held a secret meeting in Istanbul with Otunbayeva's 28-year-old son, Atai Sadybakasov, who had no official post and no experience in the jet fuel business.
Asked about this, Bekbolotov said he met with Otunbayeva's son only because "we couldn't get in the door with the president's office" to explain the business. He described the Istanbul meeting as "absolutely useless."
Otunbayeva's son, reached by telephone, declined to comment. His mother, the president, said she knew nothing of the encounter in Istanbul: "I was not told and I never heard about this." She added: "The corruption is endless. All these dark corners. It is like trying to clean the Augean Stables."
While producing no evidence to support her accusations, she added that she had asked her son to leave Kyrgyzstan for a while to prevent him from getting involved with "jackals."
"I'm trying to pull him out," she said.
The U.S. congressional report on all of this is supposed to come out in November. Should be good reading.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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