Since taking early retirement, the trained electrician from canton Zurich has made a new career in Central Asia. In the process, he is indirectly giving a boost to democracy in his adopted country of Kazakhstan. “On the outside, very little has changed here over the past 25 years,” says Max Schneeberger. We are bumping along a tarmac road riddled with potholes in the outskirts of Almaty. A tangled spaghetti of power and telephone lines hangs above our heads. Despite the no-parking signs, parked cars line the roadside. “I hope no one is blocking my driveway today,” Schneeberger sighs, as we draw nearer to his house. Today he is in luck, as his access is unobstructed. Schneeberger has been living in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city with two million inhabitants, for a quarter of a century. He has clear memories of the day he arrived in the country. “I landed here in mid-May, with a mandate to set up a distribution network for my company and then move on after a few months.” This was ...
