#218: Watch Out, Kyrgyzstan!

Does anyone know who Robert Fletcher is? I saw this guy yesterday on Manas Avenue (near the Kyrgyz National University) where he was posing for a picture with his usual "thumb-up" and a limo in the background. Judging from the crowd outside the building where he apparently rented room for his lectures, people are falling for the aggressive ad campaign in Bishkek. Everywhere he is described as a "millionaire-mentor," who can teach people how to make millions of greenbacks.

This is one of the billboards in Bishkek (Robert Fletcher is the first from the left). There was also a big article in one of the biggest-selling newspapers in Bishkek. Smaller ads are on trees and poles around Bishkek.
Global System Training (rus/eng), the company that he founded in Ukraine, says this:

And he really has lots of experience and knowledge to share. He has 25-year experience in sales and marketing, 20 years in advertising, investing in stocks, business, real estate, during 10 years he was a National Sales Director of the USA, along with this he has been a consultant and adviser for a number of big American companies and made more than 2000 seminars and training.

I did not find where he worked as the National Sales Director (of the whole United States of America?) and which successful companies he consulted. He also has very impressive credentials - Honorary Professor, Doctor, Academic, Millionaire-Mentor Roberts Fletcher. Professor where?
I have a feeling that this guy is a big swindler and on a path to take advantage of poor and credulous people of Kyrgyzstan. Apparently, he has gotten in trouble in Ukraine when he tried to enter Russia with a fake passport.

The incident throws light into one of the murkier corners of ex-pat culture here in Eastern Europe - the small group foreigners who come to the former Soviet UNI0N to take advantage of what remains of this region's 'Wild East' spirit and profit from whatever prestige their Western 'credentials' give them among naive natives.

Watch out, Kyrgyzstan!