Waldemar Kisner, a 53-year-old German businessman, said that 24 lenders from Germany, who built the stadium “Bunyodkor” and the Palace of International Forums in Tashkent, have no complaints about the new leadership of Uzbekistan in the matter of old debts. It is reported by centralasian.org.
On the eve of the visit of the Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Germany, a large German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the German companies that had participated in the construction of the Palace of International Forums in Tashkent had not been returned their tens of millions of euros.
The author of an article Daniel Bryson notes that ten years after the construction of the Palace of International Forums in Tashkent, German companies that did not receive millions of euros now hope for the support of politicians.
Waldemar Kisner representing 24 German companies that for ten years cannot receive their money for the construction of the Palace of International Forums and the stadium “Bunyodkor” in Tashkent declared that the problem of “debts” should not affect economic ties between two countries.
“Total debt is € 72 million, not € 130 million. 60 million of them are intended for the “Palace of forums” and 10 million for the stadium “Bunyodkor”. For the construction of these facilities, we signed a contract with Zeromax in Switzerland in 2009, but not with the Uzbek government. The head of the company Zeromax was arrested and was unable to pay the bills of 24 German companies. At present, Zeromax’s debt to German lenders amounts to € 72 million. I have been working in Uzbekistan for 20 years. The question is that the company owes us money. And now there is an opportunity to repay this debt,” said the entrepreneur.
In the course of the official visit of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to Germany on January 20-22, negotiations are scheduled with the Bundestag chairman Wolfgang Schäuble.
Probably, during the meeting, the President of Uzbekistan will be asked a question about German lenders. However, the German businessman Waldemar Kisner, who is directly involved with the debt problem, does not want this issue to be politically motivated. “We were invited to participate in new projects in Uzbekistan, we are looking forward to the future, not for the past. We met with the leadership of Uzbekistan. It gave us confidence and we were glad to accept an invitation to participate in new projects. This problem has found a very simple solution and we don’t want to shift the old debt onto the shoulders of the new leadership of the country,” the German businessman says.
The Palace of International Forums was considered the most expensive construction object in Uzbekistan over the past 20 years, it was built in 2009 on square “Amir Temur” in Tashkent.
The general contractor for the construction of the palace was Zeromax. The company entered into a contract with German companies for the installation and finishing works of the palace’s metalwork. Information on the cost of construction has not been disclosed.
In accordance with the data of the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1 million and one hundred thousand Swarovski crystals were used in the building.
The palace was built by the company Zeromax on the basis of the President Islam Karimov’s decree “On construction of the Palace of forums in Tashkent”, signed on June 5, 2008.
