“Kumtor has a great future ahead, it will continue to operate for another 40-50 years for the benefit of the country and in the interests of the people,” Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov said Wednesday at a ceremony launching an underground mining project at the country’s most lucrative, and contentious, asset.
In May 2021, the Kyrgyz parliament enacted a law that paved the way for the government – headed by Japarov – to nationalize the mine, which had long been under the management of a Canadian firm, Centerra Gold.
Japarov’s political career is tied to the Kumtor issue. In October 2012, he was among a trio of agitators – including Kamchibek Tashiev and Talant Mamytov – protesting in favor of nationalizing Kumtor with such fervor that they stormed Bishkek’s White House, then the presidential office building. The three were charged in 2013 with attempting to violently seize power, but a Bishkek court acquitted them. Additional protests in October 2013 in Karakol, also regarding Kumtor, allegedly led to the attempted kidnapping of the regional akim. Japarov, accused of orchestrating the incident, fled the country. When he returned in 2017, he was detained and ultimately sentenced to jail on an 11-year sentence.
He was in jail until October 2020, when protestors released him. Within a month he was acting president.
It was of little surprise that nationalizing Kumtor remained a core interest for Japarov. He’d gone to jail for sake of the idea.
The May 2021 law allowed the the government to take over operations in case of documented threats to the environment or human health. That’s exactly what it did on May 17, putting a former member of the Board of Directors of Centerra Gold, Tengiz Bolturuk, in charge.
The initial three month “external management” period stretched on and on, with Bishkek allegedly refusing to engage with Centerra. But by January 2022 Centerra was in talks with Bishkek on extricating itself from the mine. It did so in early April 2022, announcing an agreement to “effect a clean separation.” The following month, a Bishkek court canceled a lower court’s May 2021 decision to fine Centerra 261.7 billion soms ($3.2 billion) – stemming from an environmental complaint that had provided the basis for the nationalization in the first place.
By August 2022, Kumtor was entirely in Kyrgyz hands.
Incidentally, the man Japarov had entrusted Kumtor to, Bolturuk, was arrested in September 2022 on charges that he’d appropriated around 1 billion soms while running the mine. In November 2023, he was fined 800,000 soms.
The recent event at which Japarov spoke was the formal launch of an underground mining operation at Kumtor, which had long produced gold via open-pit mining. Japarov characterized underground mining as environmentally more sound, and lobbed insults and accusations at the mine’s former operators.
“Instead of mining gold underground, however, the foreign company colluded secretly with former authorities and corrupt officials to choose the cheaper and easier option of open-pit mining, destroying the glaciers in the process,” Japarov said. “Former officials sacrificed the glaciers for their own personal gain, to the detriment of the state, leaving a black mark on history.”
Japarov said that 1,600 meters of tunnels have been dug. The underground mine is expected to operate for 17 years and provide 147 tonnes of gold.
The Kyrgyz president also pushed back against critics who wonder where the gold mine’s revenues are going.
“When we say that Kumtor has produced a certain number of tons of gold or brought in a certain amount of billions of dollars, some citizens doubt: ‘Where is this money if we don’t see it?’ or even accuse us of ‘stealing it.’”
He said that revenues from the mine had been used in a variety of projects, from roads to schools, salary increases, and military equipment.
Japarov has made his colorful past a signature of his political persona.
“If in 2012, instead of imprisoning us (remember those years?), we had been able to return Kumtor, the country would have retained over $10 billion in revenue since then,” he claimed.
