Friday, July 20, 2012 -
The entire leadership of Kyrgyzstan’s State Drug Trafficking Control Service has been fired for failing in their duties, the Kyrgyz government press service said Thursday.
Kyrgyz Prime Minister Omurbek Babanov dismissed anti-drugs agency chief Vitaly Orozaliev and his deputies Damir Sagynbaev and Daniyar Otorbaev at the recommendation of an intergovernmental commission report released earlier this week.
An investigation by the commission under Kyrgyzstan’s Defense Council had spent well over a year on a study into the work of the service.
Its report noted that the drugs agency had demonstrated an “absence of effective management and disadvantages in all spheres of its activity” at senior levels, the Kyrgyz independent news agency 24.kg reported.
The commission went on to state that it recommended the removal of all senior managers “for bad governance of state service work, and an absence of initiatives by executive bodies and local government coordination on drug trafficking issues.”
The report noted that “the commission checked Drug Trafficking Control State Service activity during 2011 and six months of 2012”, 24.kg reported.
The Defense Council launched the extensive investigation into the agency on the instructions of President Almazbek Atambayev.
Earlier this year, Kyrgyz Vice Prime Minister Shamil Atakhanov said that some thirty underworld groups with links to illegal drug trafficking have a firm foothold in Kyrgyzstan.
He said that between them, the gangs control around one ton of Afghan heroin.