DUSHANBE, April 8, Asia-Plus  -- “With my arrest, the country’s budget has lost 5 million somonis (TJS)”, Marouf Orifov, the director general of the Dushanbe company M&P, remarked on April 7, making a pre-impositions statement in the Supreme Court.

According to him, over the past several years, M&P, which owns a chain of supermarkets Orima in Dushanbe and Kulob, has transferred 2 million somonis to the country’s budget annually.   “In 2007, we planned to open three other supermarkets and one hypermarket in the country, and thereby, we would increase our tax payments to 5 million somonis,” Orifov said.  

He also said that with his arrest the number of the company personnel had reduced from more than 600 people to 250 people. 

In the pre-imposition statement, he, particular, noted that his arrest has caused concern among business circles of the country.  “All the business community of Tajikistan and a number of international financial institutions hope for fair decision of the court,” said Orifov, “In other words, further development of business in Tajikistan depends on this.”   

As it had been reported earlier, a prosecutor in the trial of Orifov asked the Supreme Court on April 4 to sentence Orifov to a 4-year prison term with holding him a minimum-security penal colony.  The prosecutor asked the court to find Orifov guilty under two articles of the country’s Criminal code: Article 320 (giving bribe) and Article 292 (tax evasion).  The prosecutor added that the charge of forgery should be repudiated because of insufficiency of proof.   

Proceedings started on March 13 with the reading of the indictment, which charged Orifov with giving bribe, tax evasion and forgery.     

In the meantime, three defense lawyers of Orifov noted that investigation had failed to produce proofs to support the remaining two charges their client faces and asked the court to discharge Orifov.     

A sentence on Marouf Orifov, director general of the Dushanbe company M&P, which owns a chain of supermarkets Orima in Dushanbe and Kulob, is expected to be passed today.

 We will recall that at first, the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) instituted criminal proceedings against Orifov last summer on charge of giving bribe, but later, the case was transferred to the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption. 

Orifov was detained in July 2007 when he was trying to give $10,000 in bribe to the GKNB investigator.  Inspections carried out by the GKNB economic squad last July revealed that more than 1,500 tons of confectionery and other products beyond their shelf life were stored in the M&P warehouses in Dushanbe.