One Lump or Two?

I suspect this sort of thing isn't altogether out of the ordinary in the historical context of the way international business comes to Washington to get its corruption on, but there's something particularly Bush-era about this story.

Ken Silverstein of Harper's has reported that "Washington insiders at a firm called GlobalOptions were working on behalf of Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov and subject of an Interpol arrest warrant. The whole Karimov clan has grown rich through corruption and a new lawsuit charges that GlobalOptions’s client employs mob tactics as part of her business practices."

Silverstein continues:

The lawsuit was brought by Interspan, a Texas tea firm, which is suing an insurance company called Liberty. The latter, the suit alleges, refused to honor a policy bought by Interspan after that company was driven out of Uzbekistan. “Interspan became the target of an extortion scheme that had as its objective the illegal appropriation of Interspan’s valuable business assets in Uzbekistan,” the lawsuit says. “Interspan was advised that this extortion scheme was orchestrated by individuals with ties to the highest levels of the Uzbek government, including Gulnara Karimova.”

According to the lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of Texas, Interspan began operation in Uzbekistan in 1998 and by May of 2005 held a 30 percent share of the country’s packaged tea market. This annoyed Gulnara, whose vast business interests included a state firm with an interest in the local tea market.

In February of 2006, the lawsuit says, hooded men with machine guns, allegedly working for the Uzbek intelligence service, seized Eskender Kiamilev, the father of one of Interspan’s principals. At the same time, armed government agents “entered Interspan’s offices and warehouses in Tashkent and demanded all of Interspan’s physical property, including a large inventory of tea.” Soldiers also seized a large compound and two apartments belonging to the Kiamilev family.

That same month, Interspan received an email from Liberty’s agent in Uzbekistan, which read: “The Samarqand Tea Factory [allegedly owned by Gulnara] is the primary raw tea processor and monopoly supported by the state and has drawn the interest of the first family. I am sure Eskender has been under observation for some time and only now was a decision taken to neutralize him and remove his network from the market. If the state or Samarqand Tea can dismantle the Interspan network then I think any personal interest in holding Eskender will disappear.”

The agent warned in another email to Interspan that it would be imprudent to complain to Gulnara or her business associates....

The story goes on, and on. While I don't exactly burst into tears when larger corporate entities who are victimized by mob tactics, I can't help but see this sort of thing as the logical extension of the governing ethic that Bush and Cheney have brought to D.C.