[Translation provided by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre]

Borkoev can be responsible not only for the accident at the Bishkek CHPP? 5 March 2018

A few days ago, Berdibek Borkoev, the former first deputy general director of JSC "Electric Power Plants", was detained. After the accident at the Bishkek combined heat and power plant (CHPP), he is suspected of embezzlement and illegal withdrawal of funds from the OJSC in especially large amounts.

Energy expert and public figure Rasul Umbetaliyev noted that the winter incident at the capital's thermal power plant, as expected, revealed a number of other crimes committed in the energy sector. And a party in some of them - also quite expected - was Borkoev.

In particular, Umbetaliev spoke about how the tender for the procurement of repair activities at the Toktogul, Shamaldy-Sai, Uch-Kurgan and At-Bashi HPPs was held in the amount of 43.5 million soms.

On 9 March 2017, JSC "Electric Power Plants" company created a tender commission, and a month later it identified 6 applications that met the requirements of the procuring entity…

The application of the Russian company JSC Gidroremont-VVK, a branch of PJSC RusHydro, was rejected by the commission due to non-compliance with qualification requirements.

-The point was that the contractor had no experience in working with hydroelectric power plants, - the expert explained to Vesti.kg. - Therefore, Gidroremont-VKK was excluded from the list and was no longer considered.

But probably, the first deputy general director Berdibek Borkoev considered this stage of assessment of applications superfluous. Despite the conclusion of the tender commission and the request of the State Procurement Department to suspend the purchase, on 19th of May he personally made a decision and named Gidroremont-VVK the winner of the tender.

-At the same time, he sent letters to the heads of the Toktogul, Shamaldy-Sai, Uch-Kurgan, At-Bashinsky hydroelectric power stations, indicating that they should work with this Russian company, - added Umbetaliev. Companies that were specifically created and for many years carried out construction and repair of equipment at hydroelectric power stations suffered huge losses, as did the republican budget.

As he noted, Borkoev's actions grossly violate the law of the Kyrgyz Republic "On Public Procurement", and also fall under the articles of the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Republic 303 "Corruption", 304 "Abuse of official position" and 315 "Forgery".

Berdibek Bokoev also signed contracts for the repair of equipment at the Bishkek CHPP, the expert reminds...

“The detainee is just an executor, a 'cog' in the state's 'corporate' corruption system,” he assures. - To reduce the size and scale of systemic corruption, you need to "dig" higher. To identify the organizers of corruption crimes and be sure to send them to jail.”

As a reminder, earlier Vesti.kg reported that the ex-first deputy general director of Electric Stations Berdibek Borkoev was detained on March 3. According to the State Committee for National Security, the investigation revealed the fact of embezzlement and illegal withdrawal of funds from the enterprise on an especially large scale.

The money was intended for preparing the CHPP for the autumn-winter period of 2017-2018.

At the end of January, an accident occurred at the capital's CHPP, as a result of which Bishkek residents were left without heat and hot water for several days. The thermometer in those days dropped to minus 30 degrees.

On February 16 2018, Borkoev was removed from his post.