Corruption in Kyrgyzstan has worsened in recent years. Despite having a strong legal framework on paper, there remains a huge gulf in Kyrgyzstan between the law and its implementation. Kyrgyzstan’s rampant corruption which penetrates all levels of society, including the presidency, eventually caused the Tulip Revolution in 2005, overthrowing Askar Akayev, and the 2010 Kyrgyzstani revolution, ousting Kurmanbek Bakiyev from office.
Corruption has become an integral part of the governance mechanism in Kyrgyzstan. Corruption is a large and significant problem that poses the main threat to the country's national security, socio-economic development, the well-being of society and the people and affects the functioning of state authorities, judicial authorities, law enforcement agencies, the penal system, local government bodies, health systems and education in Kyrgyzstan.
According to modern Kyrgyz legislation, corruption is a deliberate act consisting in the creation of an unlawful stable connection of one or more officials with powers of authority with individuals or groups in order to illegally obtain material, any other benefits and advantages, as well as their provision of these benefits and advantages. individuals and legal entities that pose a threat to the interests of society or the state.
There are laws aimed at preventing corruption, but their implementation is very weak. The low level of prosecution of corrupt officials is another factor contributing to the rampant corruption in Kyrgyzstan. It is not a criminal offense for a non-public official to influence the decision of a public official. The Kyrgyz judiciary is facing a serious functional deficit due to limited resources and judicial corruption.
In Kyrgyzstan, corruption is present at almost all levels of society, business and government. Notable among Kyrgyzstan's large reserves of gold and coal is the largest gold deposit in Central Asia, Kumtor. Although the state budget receives only a small part of taxes and payments from Kumtor, the mine contributed to many corruption scandals and allegations of corruption among the country's top officials).
"Bribery among low and mid-level officials is part of everyday life and sometimes even transparent," says Freedom House, adding that widespread corruption helps "limit equality of opportunity."
Local authorities and militia in the south of Kyrgyzstan are characterized by a high level of corruption and intolerance towards Uzbeks. The June crisis deprived state institutions of that small trust from the Uzbek diaspora, which was in short supply before the crisis. Corruption of local authorities and militia in the south of Kyrgyzstan contributed greatly to the June 2010 events.
At one time, even Akayev admitted that crime and corruption have firmly settled on the seventh floor of the White House (there are the offices of the president and the prime minister). This statement has not lost its relevance under Bakiyev. Thus, according to the lists of his Ak Zhol party, in 2007, one of the leaders of the southern organized criminal group, Sanzhar Kadyraliev, entered parliament, later shot dead in his office deputy car. Other leaders of organized criminal groups, Iskender Matraimov, Bayaman Erkinbaev, Rysbek Akmatbaev, Omurbek Bakirov, Ulan Cholponbaev, Bakytbek Zhetigenov, Altynbek Sulaimanov, were also elected to the country's parliament.
History
The USSR Corruption in Kyrgyzstan originated as part of the Corruption in the Soviet Union.
At first, bribery in Soviet Kyrgyzstan was recognized as counter-revolutionary activity, and the 1922 Criminal Code provided for execution for this crime. Despite the toughness of criminal norms, corruption continued to exist in the USSR as well in the judicial system and law enforcement agencies.
Thus, at the expense of the union center, there was a further economic strengthening of the lowest level of the state as a corporation - an enterprise, and the cash flows that the directors could control significantly increased.
A fictitious economy arose and operated, which did not create goods, but the wind of which blew the sails of illegal business well and made it possible to feed well those who were "at the helm of power" not only administrative, but, above all, economic. This includes the production of surplus, low-quality and counterfeit products; inflationary and speculative price increases. The additions to the fulfillment of the plan are especially indicative. All this served the appropriation of surplus value by private individuals, one way or another involved in production.
As KGB General A.G. Sidorenko recalls, Andropov more than once sent Brezhnev operational materials about the extortion of some party leaders, but usually they returned with a note: "Reported, destroy."
By the beginning of the perestroika, “their own people” in the state (and perhaps in the party) structures had not only domestic “shadow” companies, but also foreign capital, which in this way also had the opportunity to influence the policy of the Soviet state.
The law on cooperation, adopted in 1989, laid the foundation for the legalization of underground workshops and the privatization of state property.
“If in 1986 the right to direct export and import activities was experimentally granted to a limited circle of enterprises and organizations,” it was noted on the pages of Izvestia of the Central Committee of the CPSU, “since April 1, 1989, practically all Soviet state and cooperative enterprises, other organizations received the right to directly export their own products and buy goods for the money earned to develop production and meet the needs of their work collectives. "
Thus, already in 1986 - 1987. the transfer of Soviet money (including, and perhaps above all, government and party money) abroad begins. There they were converted into dollars, pounds, marks, etc., which made it possible to avoid their depreciation under the influence of "shock therapy", and then, after 1991, to return to Kyrgyzstan and other former Soviet republics.
In the USSR, until the early 1980s, the topic of corruption was not openly raised. The fact that from the mid-1950s to 1986, bribery registered in criminal practice increased 25 times, Soviet citizens were not informed ...
The number of officials in the Soviet Union per 1000 inhabitants: in 1922 there were 5.2; in 1928 - 6.9; in 1940 - 9.5; in 1950 - 10.2; in 1985 - 8.7
In modern Kyrgyzstan 1992-2000 An important role in the spread of corruption in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan was the bankruptcy of successfully operating state-owned enterprises and factories and their further privatization at the residual, symbolic value by those in power. Which, due to the theft of state property, have officially turned into dollar multimillionaires. In the future, the privatization of agricultural land assigned large allotments of land to the newly appeared corrupt officials. In such a criminal way, the people in Kyrgyzstan were deprived of public property, created by the labor of several generations of the people, and which passed into the private property of state officials in power. The initial accumulation of capital through appropriation for the symbolic value of state property contributed to the fact that people with a criminal past aspired to power in Kyrgyzstan. As a result, about 30 percent of the country's people live below the poverty line, and Kyrgyzstan is among the ten poorest countries in the world.
Total corruption contributes to a large flow of smuggling,
In 1998, Doctor of Law N.I. Matuzov noted that "the privileges, abuses, corruption of modern bosses have acquired such forms and scales that even the party officials of the Soviet period did not dream of."
In the book "Goal number one" Mikhail Antonov and the head of the legal department of the Presidential Administration of the Kyrgyz Republic Marat Ukushov assessed corruption in Kyrgyzstan as "total".
At the beginning of 2019, A. Sharshenbayev, an employee of the Transparency International Kyrgyzstan center, stated that Kyrgyzstan is one of the ten most corrupt countries in the world and that corruption is one of the most destructive forces in the Kyrgyz state.
In the National Strategy for Sustainable Development of the Kyrgyz Republic for the period 2013-2017, it was noted that the system of government and business in Kyrgyzstan is saturated with corruption and criminal business, the criminalization of certain state structures. The state of the law enforcement and law enforcement systems indicates that they are unable to resist corruption, since they themselves are often the subject of it.
From the year 2000 In 2025, Transparency International evaluated Kyrgyzstan in relation to 182 other countries in its Corruption Perceptions Index, where countries are scored on a scale of 0 to 100: 0 signifies a perception of a very corrupt public sector, and 100 a perception of a very honest public sector. The lowest and highest scores worldwide in 2024 were 9 and 89, with an average score of 42. Kyrgyzstan's score was 26. Transparency International also compared Kyrgyzstan to eighteen other countries of the Europe and Central Asia region, which collectively scored between 17 and 50, with an average of 34. Citing the fall of Kyrgyzstan's score from 31 in 2020 to 26 in 2023, Transparency International wrote, "In just four years, Kyrgyzstan (26) has turned from a bastion of democracy with a vibrant civil society to a consolidated authoritarian regime that uses its justice system to target critics."
During 2022 the government used the Protection from False Information Law to block access to several news websites. Transparency International reported that in 2021 Kyrgyzstan used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to suppress journalism and public assemblies, and that the disposition of COVID-19 relief funds had been concealed.
Experts note that the turnover of the shadow economy is estimated at an average of 60% of the country's GDP, which is about 130 billion soms, since corruption is one of the ways to avoid the established system of taxation and state reporting. It is known that through corruption there is a redistribution of income in favor of certain corporate and social groups at the expense of the most vulnerable segments of the population who are unable to resist extortion and other corruption abuses.
At the same time, some analysts argue that there is no fight against corruption in Kyrgyzstan, arrests of middle-level officials do not violate the bribery system, and no anti-corruption policy has been developed.
One of the entrenched forms of corruption in modern Kyrgyzstan is the employment of relatives of officials of all ranks in structures with a high level of income, which can be considered as payment for their loyalty to the “adopters” and their structures. Relatives often become cover for business and property of officials by rewriting ownership. The press noted cases of such suspicion. In particular, the wives of the Matraimov brothers.
History and cases
Akayev administration
In 2005, after the revolution that overthrew President Akayev, a commission was set up to investigate his business assets; the tentative list was for 42 businesses inclusive of the Kumtor Gold Mine. As early as 2002, Akayev and his son Aydar were alleged to have received $2 million in lease payments, along with other payments, totalling $119 million through his two airport service companies. However, investigations have met with much difficulty in identifying the exact ownership of the companies.
Bakiyev administration President Bakiyev, after his rise to the presidency in 2006, in turn appointed his son, Maxim Bakiyev, to the nation’s development agency. There were murky deals signed with the China and the transfer of assets to overseas tax havens.
Jeenbekov administration