The head of legal management of the State Customs Committee of Uzbekistan Vladimir Chipig has been subjected to service investigation for frank conversation which has taken place during a practical seminar with businessmen of Tashkent.
The seminar has been organized by Open Company "BRIDGE" and has passed under a theme "Problems and ways of perfection of legal base of regulation of export of goods to Uzbekistan". V.Chipig informed participants, that many documents of customs character are prepared not in the State Customs Committee, and in complete in other departments but which then the decision of the government go down for execution to customs bodies. He also has declared, that contracts of private businessmen with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are not accepted by customs house because of the closed decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
I was present at a seminar and have prepared an article on its results titled "The Uzbek customs house: to give "kindness" or is it better to give it?", which has been published on the popular web site "CentrAsia" (www.centrasia.ru) on November 29, 2003. After the publication of this material V.Chipig has been interrogated by inspectors of National Security Service of Uzbekistan - I was informed about this by the organizer of a seminar, the head of Open Company "MOST", Yelena Ilyasova. She asked to give a refutation, to take fault on myself, supposedly, these are personal fictions of the author, to protect the official. Meanwhile, my attempt to contact V.Chipig has not gone right, he also didn't contact the author of the material.
V.Chipig in his speech has opened nothing new: any businessman engaged in the foreign trade operations, knows about problems and barriers, implemented by different state structures of Uzbekistan. It is a pity the fair official who openly has told about this.
