On May 2, the son of the President of Tajikistan Imomali Rahmon, Rustam, reportedly shot his uncle Hassan Sadullayev. According to the report distributed by Tajikistan news website, Sadullayev was taken for medical treatment to Germany, but he died on May 8.
Sadullayev was probably shot in connection with a struggle for control of Orienbank – one of the leading financial institutions of Tajikistan. Sadullayev was the head of the bank, but during the last months one of the president’s daughters, Takhmina, who owns one of Dushanbe’s major construction firms, tried to get control of the bank from her uncle. However, when negotiations failed to yield an agreement, Rustam Rahmon apparently decided to help his sister resolve the dispute in more extreme way.
Prior to this incident, Sadullayev was considered one of the most powerful personalities in Tajikistan, almost with the same authority as the President; the capital assets of Orienbank are reported to be about US$47 mln. Sadullayev was also involved in a court case involving fraud at the Tajikistan Aluminium Plant, one of the country’s key economic assets, being the top official in a British Virgin Islands company CDH Investments, and responsible for trading large part of Tajikistan’s aluminium output.
The court case with the money that were taken from Tajikistan Aluminium Plant, and the BVI-registered CDH, linked to it and charged with unlawful conspiracy and theft, has arisen controversy in Tajikistan after the public disclosure of the fact that Rahmon’s administration has paid $US120 million in legal fees to British lawyers. Tajikistan in the poorest country in Central Asia, and this is an amount equivalent to about 5% of country’s GDP.