Who is behind the Kazakhgate scan­dal in the Belgian media? OSI revealed one name so far: that of the Kazakh oli­garch Bulat Utemuratov, who orches­trat­ed it in late 1990s and ear­ly 2000s. (http://www.opensourceinvestigations.com/belgium/propaganda-works-first-kazakhgate/)

Another char­ac­ter close­ly linked to Utemuratov is Mukhtar Ablyazov, a Kazakh oli­garch too, and a fugi­tive from jus­tice who is cur­rent­ly liv­ing in France.

The French newslet­ter Intelligence Online recent­ly sug­gest­ed that some mem­bers of the so-called “Kazakhgate” com­mis­sion are inter­est­ed in talk­ing to Ablyazov. (see here: https://www.intelligenceonline.com/corporate-intelligence/2017/08/23/ablyazov-s-secret-lobbying-against-chodiev,108258465-ART)

If so, this means the com­mis­sion is ready to take sides, know­ing­ly or not, in a war between https://www.opendemocracy.net two groups of Kazakh oli­garchs – a war that began decades ago.

Who is Mukhtar Ablyazov?

Ablyazov, born and bred in Kazakhstan, became tru­ly rich in 2005, when he became the own­er and chair­man of the board of direc­tors of Kazakhstan’s largest bank, BTA. In December 2004, the for­mer own­er of BTA, Yerzhan Tatishev, died in a con­tro­ver­sial hunt­ing acci­dent, being shot (alleged­ly by mis­take) by a for­mer gang­ster (see here: http://kazworld.info/?p=9486). Ablyazov then forced Tatishev’s wid­ow to sell him the share pack­age that made him the sole own­er of BTA (see here: http://kazworld.info/?p=28543).

After gain­ing own­er­ship of BTA, Ablyazov began cre­at­ing a net­work of off­shore com­pa­nies through which he man­aged to siphon bil­lions of dol­lars from the bank. The Kazakh gov­ern­ment dis­cov­ered the scheme in 2009, when it nation­al­ized BTA. According to Kazakh pros­e­cu­tors, Ablyazov man­aged to steal 7.5 bil­lion dol­lars using his net­work of dum­my corporations.

Because of the judi­cial inquiry that began in 2009, Ablyazov fled Kazakhstan to UK. In August 2009, BTA Bank launched the first of its 11 civ­il pro­ceed­ings against Ablyazov in the UK High Court.

In 2011, the United Kingdom grant­ed Ablyazov polit­i­cal asy­lum for the peri­od of tri­al proceedings.

In 2012, the High Court in London has ruled that BTA Bank is enti­tled to recov­er 2 bil­lion dol­lars in assets from Ablyazov and his asso­ciates. (https://www.ft.com/content/fa197eae-909a-11e2-a456-00144feabdc0)  Later, the same court ordered Ablyazov’s asso­ciates to pay an addi­tion­al 1.5 bil­lion dol­lars to BTA. (https://en.tengrinews.kz/crime/London-court-orders-Ablyazovs-accomplices-to-pay-over-15–17955/)

In the mean­time, in ear­ly 2012 the London court sen­tenced Ablyazov to 22 months in jail for “seri­ous” and “brazen” con­tempt of court in try­ing to hide more than 34 mil­lion pounds of assets from his BTA cred­i­tors. (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/16/arrest-warrant-kazakh-billionaire-mukhtar-ablyazov)

Facing jail in UK, Ablyazov fled to France using a pass­port issued by the Central African Republic. In July 2013 he was locat­ed and arrest­ed by the French author­i­ties (https://www.euromoney.com/article/b12kjzckjgvs22/the-hunt-for-mukhtar-ablyazov-banker-criminal-fugitive-victim).

In 2014, a French court order allowed the French author­i­ties to extra­dite Ablyazov to Russia, where he was charged with the same crimes he was charged in Kazakhstan, since BTA also had branch­es in Russia and Ukraine. However, in December 2016 the French State Council over­ruled the order and released Ablyazov from cus­tody. (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apps-putin-commentary-idUSKCN1B91WN)

Finally, also in 2014 the UK can­celed Ablyazov’s polit­i­cal refugee sta­tus. (http://www.lse.co.uk/sharecast-news-article.asp?ArticleCode=21616501&ArticleHeadline=UK_revokes_asylym_status_of_former_Kazakh_banker_Ablyazov)

To sum it up, Mukhtar Ablyazov is an oli­garch who com­mit­ted fraud on a very large scale. He was repeat­ed­ly con­vict­ed by a British court – he was even sen­tenced to jail for con­tempt of court. All this hap­pened in the UK, where the stan­dards of jus­tice are very high.

Mukhtar Ablyazov and Bulat Utemuratov 

According to Professor Sebastien Peyrouse from George Washington University, who wrote an exten­sive study on the neopat­ri­mo­ni­al regime in Kazakhstan, since the 1990s, two cir­cles of senior offi­cials have been in com­pe­ti­tion with one anoth­er as the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of dif­fer­ing, some­times con­tra­dic­to­ry inter­ests. One cir­cle is led by Bulat Utemuratov; the oth­er one com­pris­es, among oth­ers, Chodiev, Ibragimov and Mashkevich.

“The com­pe­ti­tion between these two net­works is struc­tured around the min­ing sec­tor. Utemuratov’s rela­tions in this sec­tor rival those of Mashkevich, whose ENRC also works in African mar­kets, the stomp­ing grounds of Glencore […]. In pub­licly for­mu­lat­ing this com­pe­ti­tion, Utemuratov played the card of Kazakh nation­al­ism, and hoped to assem­ble under his lead­er­ship Kazakh oli­garchs opposed to the pre­dom­i­nant role of non-Kazakhs. This alliance includ­ed Mukhtar Ablyazov before he fell into disgrace—whereupon Utemuratov then bought out much of his busi­ness and com­mu­ni­ca­tions empire […].” (see here, p. 365=366: https://www2.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%20archive/GWASHU_DEMO_20_4/115R0286T7381151/115R0286T7381151.pdf)

In oth­er words, Ablyazov is Utemuratov’s pupil and, to some extent, his pro­tégé. After all, when Ablyazov fled from Kazakhstan, it was Utemuratov who bought his busi­ness­es, pre­sum­ably to keep them safe from competition.

Both Ablyazov and Utemuratov belong to the ultra-nation­al­ist camp of Kazakh oli­garchs, in direct con­flict with the likes of Chodiev, Ibragimov and Mashkevich, who, as non-Kazakhs, are treat­ed as foes, not only as busi­ness competitors.

Far-right connections

Ablyazov’s grudge against the Chodiev, Ibragimov and Mashkevich is man­i­fest. On May 17 2017, for instance, he shared on his Facebook page a post by Aydos Sadykov: “Khromtau is a small town in the Aktobe region. In the 90s it was pri­va­tized by Mashkevich, Chodiev and Ibragimov. The so-called “Eurasian group” bought from the state the only chrome mines in the coun­try. In the entire post-Soviet space, chrome was mined only in two places: in Khromtau and Petrozavodsk (Karelia, Russia). Since then, Kazchrome belongs to the cit­i­zens of Israel, Belgium and Uzbekistan.” [Chodiev and Ibragimov are Uzbeks, and they also hold Belgian nation­al­i­ty; Mashkevitch holds Israeli nationality.]

To this, Ablyazov adds: “I would like to add that all these enter­pris­es got these own­ers free of charge back in the mid-1990s. Why? Because their busi­ness part­ner and co-own­er is President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

You will find nowhere the infor­ma­tion that this group will pay hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars for these assets in the country’s bud­get. It’s just an enter­prise stolen from the country.

On these assets, manip­u­lat­ing the shares of these enter­pris­es, using their offi­cial posi­tion, Nazarbayev and Co. stole bil­lions of dol­lars from the National Fund. And they pay pen­nies for work­ers at these enterprises.”

Ablyazov’s Facebook post post has an unmis­tak­ably pop­ulist and nation­al­is­tic tone: Chodiev, Ibragimov and Mashkevitch are for­eign­ers – Uzbeks, Belgians and Israeli – not Kazakhstani natives. They don’t deserve to own Kazakhstani prop­er­ties that they “stole” from the Kazakh peo­ple and for which they pay noth­ing. In addi­tion, they exploit poor Kazakhstani work­ers. This is qua­si-fas­cist propaganda.

Ablyazov’s far-right views are also man­i­fest from the way he spends his mon­ey. He financed, for instance, the activ­i­ty of Dmitriy Demushkin, a Russian extrem­ist recent­ly con­vict­ed for 2.5 years for alleged­ly attend­ing a par­ty to cel­e­brate Adolf Hitler’s birth­day. Demushkin is the head of the supreme nation­al coun­cil of the Russkie asso­ci­a­tion, the chair­man of the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee of the nation­al­ist par­ty, and the chair­man of the now-banned “Slavic Union”. (http://www.ibtimes.com/russian-nationalist-demushkin-granted-rally-permit-moscow-government-1892943)

Ablyazov was also strong­ly con­nect­ed to Alexander Potkin, who alleged­ly han­dled the assets belong­ing to Ablyazov in Russia. Potkin is a well-known Russian nation­al­ist, and the for­mer leader of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI). (https://en.tengrinews.kz/crime/Russian-nationalist-arrested-over-Ablyazov-embezzlement-case-256927/)

Apparently, Ablyazov also financed inter-eth­nic clash­es in south Kyrgyzstan in 2010, when in just two days about half a mil­lion eth­nic Uzbeks became refugees. He alleged­ly financed those who urged the Kyrgyz to kill their neigh­bors of a dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ty. (http://www.silkroadgazette.com/ablyazov-attempted-to-destabilize-situation-in-russia-uzbekistan-and-kyrgyzstan/)

Back to Belgium 

There is a clear con­nec­tion between Ablyazov and Utemuratov, the man who mas­ter­mind­ed the first Kazakhgate scan­dal in the late 1990s. Utemuratov’s team – Eric Van de Weghe and Le Soir’s jour­nal­ist Alain Lallemand – is still active.

There is also ample evi­dence that Ablyazov hates Chodiev, Ibragimov and Mashkevich not only because they are his and Utemuratov’s busi­ness com­peti­tors in Kazakhstan, but, more impor­tant­ly, because Ablyazov holds strong far-right beliefs. He sim­ply hates them because they are not Kazakhs, but Uzbeks and Israelis. In his mind, they are sub-humans who deserve the same fate that Uzbeks had in Kyrgyzstan in 2010.

If the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Intelligence Online is cor­rect, it seems we now have a Belgian par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion who is ready, know­ing­ly or not, to fight open­ly for the inter­ests of the worst kind of Kazakh oli­garchs – those who com­bine fraud­u­lent eco­nom­ic pow­er with a qua­si-fas­cist ideology.

In the mean­time, those who did change the law in Belgium are doing just fine. Nobody seems to both­er them – see here: http://www.opensourceinvestigations.com/belgium/van-der-maelen-busts-kazakhgate-commission/, and here: http://www.opensourceinvestigations.com/belgium/diamondgate-cdv-affair/.

The Kazakhgate Relay:

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Some time ago, the author­i­ta­tive French pub­li­ca­tions Le Monde and Liberacion shared with their read­ers infor­ma­tion that caused a seri­ous pub­lic outcry.

Their mate­ri­als report­ed that in 2009 the pres­i­dents of France and Kazakhstan were res­cu­ing a cer­tain Patokh Chodiev, a busi­ness­man born in Uzbekistan, from prison. According to the pub­li­ca­tions, Nicolas Sarkozy even went to Astana for this, and as a result, changes were alleged­ly made to Belgian leg­is­la­tion that allowed Chodiev to remain at large. Having care­ful­ly stud­ied this sto­ry, I found out a num­ber of inter­est­ing facts. 

Patokh Chodiev is a co-own­er and co-founder of Kazakhstan’s largest min­ing com­pa­ny ENRC. At the same time, he is the rich­est cit­i­zen of Belgium (with a for­tune of over $ 3.7 bil­lion), a phil­an­thropist, pres­i­dent of the World Endowment for Democracy and a doc­tor of polit­i­cal sci­ence. Chodiev cred­its him­self with friend­ly rela­tions with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, for­mer French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and even with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Being pre­sent­ed in this way, Chodiev for for­eign media becomes down­right polit­i­cal giant. However, every­thing turned out to be much more prosaic. 

The first job of Patokh Chodiev was the news­pa­per “Syrdarya Pravda”, where he held a mod­est posi­tion as a proof­read­er. Then Chodiev grad­u­at­ed from MGIMO, and he was assigned to work in the USSR trade mis­sion in Japan. After the col­lapse of the USSR, Chodiev returned to Kazakhstan and went into busi­ness. His part­ners were the future cofounders of the Eurasian National Resource Corporation (ENRC) Alexander Mashkevich and Alijan Ibragimov. The busi­ness­men began coop­er­a­tion with the Belgian com­pa­ny Tractebel, which appeared on the Kazakhstani mar­ket in the mid-90s with huge ben­e­fits for itself. In par­tic­u­lar, Tractebel received sev­er­al assets from the state at heav­i­ly dis­count­ed prices. Shodiev, Mashkevich and Ibragimov active­ly con­tributed to the embez­zle­ment of pub­lic funds. In 1994–1995, the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Kazakhstan signed an agree­ment with the Belgians on the estab­lish­ment of a num­ber of joint ven­tures. This nev­er hap­pened – how­ev­er, Tractebel man­aged to acquire Almatyenergo for just $5 million.

Already in 1997, the Belgian com­pa­ny took Kazakhstan’s main gas pipelines into con­ces­sion. For this, Chodiev, Mashkevich and Ibragimov received $55 mil­lion from Tractebel in a “kick­back” held in doc­u­ments as “con­sult­ing ser­vices.” In the same 1997, Chodiev became a Belgian cit­i­zen, and soon he was also a defen­dant in a crim­i­nal case on mon­ey laun­der­ing. In addi­tion, Tractebel announced that it was forced to bribe the defen­dants and sued them. 

The inves­ti­ga­tion last­ed more than 10 years, more and more new facts were revealed. So, at the begin­ning of the 2000s, the judge added to the charges the acqui­si­tion of real estate in Belgium with mon­ey of crim­i­nal ori­gin. The inves­ti­ga­tion also dis­cov­ered the off­shore bank International Financial Bank Limited, which Shodayev opened in the Cook Islands. However, the sit­u­a­tion soon changed – the Belgian author­i­ties passed a law under which crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion can be replaced by mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion. In accor­dance with the new rules, the busi­ness­man entered into an agree­ment with the court and paid 23 mil­lion euros for the Belgian prosecutor’s office to final­ly close this case. 

But a lit­tle more than three years have passed, and this sto­ry has attract­ed media atten­tion. In October, the French press dis­sem­i­nat­ed infor­ma­tion that the then President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, took part in sav­ing the Kazakh oli­garch from Belgian jus­tice. As report­ed by Le Monde and Liberacion, the Paris prosecutor’s office has been inves­ti­gat­ing cor­rup­tion in Sarkozy’s inner cir­cle since 2013. We are talk­ing about giv­ing a bribe in the amount of 300 thou­sand euros to the for­mer pres­i­den­tial advis­er and offi­cial for spe­cial assign­ments, Jean-Francois Etienne de Rose. It was alleged that Shodiev trans­ferred this mon­ey to him in grat­i­tude for the influ­ence of Sarkozy and his assis­tants on the Belgian court. According to French pub­li­ca­tions, dur­ing Sarkozy’s vis­it to Kazakhstan on October 6, 2009, Nazarbayev asked the French pres­i­dent to pro­tect the inter­ests of Kazakh entre­pre­neurs (pri­mar­i­ly Chodiev) in Belgium. At that time, Chodiev alleged­ly active­ly met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of large European busi­ness­es, dis­cussing with them the upcom­ing deals between Kazakhstan and France. 

“According to Etienne de Rose, Eurocopter was also try­ing to “advance an ini­tial con­tract with Russia for about 50 attack heli­copters,” Liberacion quot­ed a secret doc­u­ment pre­pared by Etienne de Rose for Sarkozy. Since Chodiev is “very close to Medvedev as well,” his fig­ure is “inevitable to sup­port, in par­tic­u­lar, this project,” it says. Liberacion claims that a spe­cial “team” was cre­at­ed at the Elysee Palace with the sole pur­pose of res­cu­ing Chodiev in Belgium. It was she who began to lob­by for the idea of sav­ing leg­isla­tive changes through the Belgian politi­cian Armand de Decker, who was both Chodiev’s lawyer and the chair­man of the Belgian Senate. When Chodiev man­aged to avoid a prison term, its par­tic­i­pants, accord­ing to the French press, received mon­e­tary rewards from a Kazakh busi­ness­man. At the same time, Chodiev alleged­ly assured Etienne de Rose of his grat­i­tude for the res­cue and promised to sup­port Check out this site Eurocopter con­tracts in Russia.

According to Le Monde, it was in grat­i­tude for Sarkozy’s ser­vices that Kazakhstan signed con­tracts in 2010 for the assem­bly of EC145 heli­copters man­u­fac­tured by Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters) in Astana and the pur­chase of oth­er prod­ucts worth 2 bil­lion euros. With all the solid­i­ty of the declared amounts, the abil­i­ty of the Kazakh-Belgian oli­garch to some­how influ­ence the con­clu­sion of a con­tract for the pur­chase of 50 French heli­copters rais­es seri­ous doubts. Neither before nor after did Chodiev have and could not have direct con­tacts with Russian Prime Minister Medvedev. Just as there can be no ques­tion of the belong­ing of a swindler and a bribe-tak­er to Medvedev’s “inner circle”. 

Also puz­zling is the ver­sion that the oli­garch could be involved in lob­by­ing the inter­ests of Eurocopter in Kazakhstan. Currently, there is cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that Chodiev is sim­ply not allowed into Kazakhstan or even into his native Uzbekistan today. 

On the oth­er hand, it is note­wor­thy that the sto­ry of cor­rup­tion in Sarkozy’s entourage and his influ­ence on neigh­bor­ing Belgium appeared exact­ly when the for­mer pres­i­dent announced his inten­tion to run again for the post of head of state. Experts believe that this may be an ele­ment of inter­nal polit­i­cal struggle. 

Chodiev him­self ben­e­fits from the hype around Sarkozy and men­tion­ing his own name – after all, this at least some­how “cov­ers up” his rep­u­ta­tion as a bud­get embez­zler. In addi­tion, Patokh Chodiev dili­gent­ly leans on titles, awards, as well as the hold­ers of such. Wikipedia men­tions that Chodiev is the own­er of the Order of Honor “for ser­vices to the state, a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the socio-eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al devel­op­ment of the coun­try” and the Order of Barys III degree, received on the occa­sion of the 20th anniver­sary of Kazakhstan’s inde­pen­dence. True, there are tens of thou­sands of such peo­ple award­ed in Kazakhstan on the occa­sion of the hol­i­day. Also, Chodiev is pre­sent­ed as a doc­tor of sci­ence and an act­ing aca­d­e­mi­cian of the Kazakhstan National Academy of Natural Sciences, the author of more than 30 sci­en­tif­ic papers. He heads the World Endowment for Democracy and is the founder of a char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion that he named after himself. 

However, exag­ger­at­ed mer­it is no help in fraud. Two years ago, ENRC had to say good­bye to its image as a trans­par­ent com­pa­ny traАded on the pres­ti­gious London Stock Exchange (LSE). During the delist­ing, it turned out that when sub­mit­ting doc­u­ments for inclu­sion in the quo­ta­tion list, ENRC reports revealed vio­la­tions that were incom­pat­i­ble with list­ing on the LSE. However, for some rea­son, the com­pa­ny was still cred­it­ed, which caused seri­ous ques­tions from the UK government. 

In addi­tion, the non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion Global Witness sub­mit­ted a spe­cial report to the British Parliament, in which it accused a Kazakh com­pa­ny of brib­ing the lead­ers of some African coun­tries. The report alleged that the Kazakhs paid mil­lions of dol­lars through off­shore com­pa­nies to a con­fi­dant of President Joseph Kabila in order to gain access to resources and pur­chase the nec­es­sary assets. The whole sto­ry with Chodiev is rem­i­nis­cent of the career of anoth­er well-known busi­ness­man, Bernard Madoff. He, too, care­ful­ly built both his impec­ca­ble rep­u­ta­tion and the finan­cial pyra­mid that even­tu­al­ly brought him to the dock.

Some time ago, the author­i­ta­tive French pub­li­ca­tions Le Monde and Liberacion shared with their read­ers infor­ma­tion that caused a seri­ous pub­lic out­cry. Their mate­ri­als report­ed that in 2009 the pres­i­dents of France and Kazakhstan were res­cu­ing a cer­tain Patokh Chodiev, a busi­ness­man born in Uzbekistan, from prison. According to the pub­li­ca­tions, Nicolas Sarkozy even went to Astana for this, and as a result, changes were alleged­ly made to Belgian leg­is­la­tion that allowed Chodiev to remain at large. Having care­ful­ly stud­ied this sto­ry, I found out a num­ber of inter­est­ing facts. Patokh Chodiev is a co-own­er and co-founder of Kazakhstan’s largest min­ing com­pa­ny ENRC. At the same time, he is the rich­est cit­i­zen of Belgium (with a for­tune of over $ 3.7 bil­lion), a phil­an­thropist, pres­i­dent of the World Endowment for Democracy and a doc­tor of polit­i­cal sci­ence. Chodiev cred­its him­self with friend­ly rela­tions with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, for­mer French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and even with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Being pre­sent­ed in this way, Chodiev for for­eign media becomes down­right polit­i­cal giant. However, every­thing turned out to be much more pro­sa­ic. The first job of Patokh Chodiev was the news­pa­per “Syrdarya Pravda”, where he held a mod­est posi­tion as a proof­read­er. Then Chodiev grad­u­at­ed from MGIMO, and he was assigned to work in the USSR trade mis­sion in Japan. After the col­lapse of the USSR, Chodiev returned to Kazakhstan and went into busi­ness. His part­ners were the future co-founders of the Eurasian National Resource Corporation (ENRC) Alexander Mashkevich and Alijan Ibragimov. The busi­ness­men began coop­er­a­tion with the Belgian com­pa­ny Tractebel, which appeared on the Kazakhstani mar­ket in the mid-90s with huge ben­e­fits for itself. In par­tic­u­lar, Tractebel received sev­er­al assets from the state at heav­i­ly dis­count­ed prices. Shodiev, Mashkevich and Ibragimov active­ly con­tributed to the embez­zle­ment of pub­lic funds. In 1994–1995, the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Kazakhstan signed an agree­ment with the Belgians on the estab­lish­ment of a num­ber of joint ven­tures. This nev­er hap­pened – how­ev­er, Tractebel man­aged to acquire Almatyenergo for just $5 mil­lion. Already in 1997, the Belgian com­pa­ny took Kazakhstan’s main gas pipelines into con­ces­sion. For this, Chodiev, Mashkevich and Ibragimov received $55 mil­lion from Tractebel in a “kick­back” held in doc­u­ments as “con­sult­ing ser­vices.” In the same 1997, Chodiev became a Belgian cit­i­zen, and soon he was also a defen­dant in a crim­i­nal case on mon­ey laun­der­ing. In addi­tion, Tractebel announced that it was forced to bribe the defen­dants and sued them.

Original source of arti­cle: www.ruscrime.com

The grand­son and son-in-law of the first pres­i­dent of Kazakhstan, as well as the head of the https://www.opendemocracy.net National Security Committee (KNB), have unreg­is­tered real estate in Dubai.

This pub­li­ca­tion Hetq became aware of the data on the own­ers of Dubai real estate, col­lect­ed by OCCRP and C4ADS. According to the laws of Kazakhstan, Dubai is an off­shore zone in which the prop­er­ty of Kazakhstanis must be sub­ject to verification.

window.tgpQueue.add('tgpli-64acc53e4a96d')Palm Jumeirah Islands. Photo: NASA

The grand­son of the ex-President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev Nurali Aliyev, Nazarbayev’s son-in-law Timur Kulibayev and the head of the KNB Karim Masimov pur­chased the prop­er­ty in 2014–2015.

As fol­lows from the reg­is­tra­tion data, Aliyev owns three res­i­dences in the Jumeirah Beach Residence microdis­trict on the Persian Gulf coast and anoth­er one in the elite yacht mari­na Marina in Dubai.

Massimov — apart­ments in Dubai’s Executive Towers com­plex and apart­ments in the Dubai International City area, pop­u­lar among expats.

The apart­ments of the bil­lion­aire and son-in-law of Nursultan Nazarbayev Timur Kulibayev are locat­ed on one of the islands of the arti­fi­cial arch­i­pel­ago “Palm Islands” (or Palm Jumeirah). In this area there are expen­sive pri­vate vil­las with their own access to the water.

These are not the first real estate scandals for Nazarbayev’s relatives

Nurali Aliyev and Timur Kulibayev have pre­vi­ous­ly had prob­lems buy­ing expen­sive real estate abroad. In 2015, the British news­pa­per The Independent report­ed that Aliyev and mem­bers of his fam­i­ly may have owned sev­er­al prop­er­ties near London’s Hyde Park, val­ued at £147 mil­lion. OCCRP also found out that he was the own­er of two com­pa­nies reg­is­tered in the British Virgin Islands, and through them he bought lux­u­ry yachts.

In 2009, the British news­pa­per Telegraph report­ed that Timur Kulibayev bought the man­sion from a mem­ber of the roy­al fam­i­ly in 2007 for £15 mil­lion. The pub­li­ca­tion found that this price is 25% high­er than the mar­ket price. In 2010, he was pros­e­cut­ed in Switzerland on sus­pi­cion of laun­der­ing approx­i­mate­ly $600 mil­lion through bribes, as well as in the form of pro­ceeds from the fraud­u­lent sale of oil and gas assets owned by the state of Kazakhstan from 2000 to 2005. The case was closed in 2013.

Management of large finan­cial flows, seizure of oth­er peo­ple’s prop­er­ty and mon­ey laun­der­ing abroad are not some­thing exclu­sive for the top offi­cials of Kazakhstan. Every year, $16.7 bil­lion is ille­gal­ly with­drawn from Kazakhstan, accord­ing to the research group Global Financial Integrity. This is com­pa­ra­ble to the dou­ble bud­get of the National Fund of the country.

Original source of arti­cle: https://www.occrp.org/

Billionaire banker Mukhtar Ablyazov was Kazakhstan’s min­is­ter of ener­gy and trade from 1998 to 1999. In 2009, Ablyazov fled Kazakhstan after $10 bil­lion was report­ed miss­ing from BTA Bank, where he was chair­man. He was arrest­ed in France in 2013 in response to extra­di­tion requests from Russia and Ukraine. Ablyazov denied alle­ga­tions of loan fraud and embez­zle­ment. He was released in December 2016 after a French court ruled that Russia’s request was polit­i­cal­ly motivated.

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Ablyazov owned CFJ Star Trust, which was set up in the Cayman Islands in 2007, with a broth­er-in-law, Syrym Shalabayev. Shalabayev was also accused of involve­ment in the alleged BTA loan fraud. He denied the charges and was grant­ed refugee sta­tus in Lithuania in 2016. CFJ Start Trust became inac­tive in November 2011 and closed in October 2012. “Efforts are being made to resign as Trustees,” an Appleby employ­ee typed in red as part of a 2012 audit of high-risk clients.

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Response

Ablyazov did not respond to a request for com­ment from ICIJ before publication.

On 5 Nov., a spokesman for Ablyazov told ICIJ that the trust was estab­lished “in view of a pri­vate place­ment for investors in BTA Bank.” The https://www.opendemocracy.net place­ment did not take place. The com­pa­ny was incor­po­rat­ed off­shore to mit­i­gate the risks of state cor­rup­tion, Ablyazov said. Ablyazov said he did not flee Kazakhstan. “BTA Bank’s finances were in strong shape and the bank was prepar­ing for an IPO on the London mar­ket,” Ablyazov said, and loss­es “were caused not by Mr Ablyazov, but by the whol­ly ille­gal forced nation­al­i­sa­tion of BTA Bank.”

Related documents

2012 Compliance Document From Appleby — Ablyazov

Offshore Leaks Database

STATEMENT

(in accor­dance with Article 181 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Kazakhstan)

On October 27, 2022, the Elge Qaitaru Public Foundation addressed you with a state­ment regard­ing the activ­i­ties of the Eurasian Group (ERG).

On December 15, 2022, we received a response from the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the above statement.

In addi­tion, we have at our dis­pos­al the response of the Ministry of Finance to a sim­i­lar request from NEGE Media LLP about the activ­i­ties of the same com­pa­ny and a num­ber of oth­er documents.

An analy­sis of the avail­able doc­u­ments allows us to con­clude that a sig­nif­i­cant dam­age was caused to the inter­ests of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This dam­age is the result of the action or inac­tion of the for­mer mem­bers of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan Mr. Marat Beketayev, Mr. Bakhyt Sultanov and Mr. Beybut Atamkulov in the process of rep­re­sent­ing the inter­ests of our state as mem­bers of the ERG Board of Directors.

1. It fol­lows from the response of the Ministry of Finance to NEGE Media LLP that for the peri­od from 2017 to 2021 in favor of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which owns a 40% stake in ERG, div­i­dends total­ing $365.6 mil­lion were accrued.

At the same time, from cor­po­rate report­ing avail­able on the ERG.sarl web­site, it fol­lows that the com­pa­ny’s EBITDA for 2017 is — $ 2.09 bil­lion, for 2018 — $ 1.913 bil­lion, for 2019 — $ 1.538 bil­lion, for 2020 — 2.023 bil­lion dol­lars, for 2021 — 4.210 bil­lion dol­lars, and free cash flow (free cash flow) only by the results of 2021 amount­ed to 1.830 bil­lion dollars.

A sim­ple arith­metic cal­cu­la­tion shows that ERG’s prof­it for the peri­od 2017–2021 was $11.774 bil­lion. Considering that the share of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the ERG is 40%, why were accrued div­i­dends over that peri­od equal to $365.6 mil­lion instead of sev­er­al bil­lion dollars?

2. Our state­ment also raised the issue of the exces­sive debt bur­den of Kazakh enter­pris­es of the Eurasian Group. However, in its response, the Ministry of Finance, while rec­og­niz­ing the group’s debt of $7 bil­lion in 2021, reas­sures us that the net debt to EBITDA ratio is about 1.5. However, the ERG cor­po­rate report­ing proves that in 2021 its debt exceed­ed EBITDA almost twice, and by 3–4 times in the pre­vi­ous years. The doc­u­ments we have at our dis­pos­al show that there is no clear pur­pose in the bil­lions of dol­lars of cred­it agree­ments between the Kazakhstani enter­pris­es of the ERG and the sanc­tioned Russian banks VTB and Sberbank, which allows us to con­clude that the pur­pose of obtain­ing these loans is to enslave Kazakhstani enterprises.

3. Another con­cern for the Kazakh econ­o­my was the issue of intra-group loans, and the Ministry of Finance sees noth­ing wrong with that. The doc­u­ments at our dis­pos­al indi­cate that under the agree­ment dat­ed December 2, 2021, the Kazakhstani enter­pris­es of the Eurasian Group pro­vid­ed a loan to the par­ent for­eign com­pa­ny equal to $500 mil­lion. In addi­tion, on January 10, 2022, imme­di­ate­ly after the so-called “January clash­es”, the ERG decid­ed to with­draw anoth­er $1.1 bil­lion from the coun­try by pro­vid­ing a loan from its Kazakh enter­pris­es to a par­ent com­pa­ny reg­is­tered in Europe. As the result of these actions alone with­in a short peri­od of time funds equal to $1.6 bil­lion were with­drawn from the coun­try. There is some infor­ma­tion about oth­er sim­i­lar loans. At the same time, it must be not­ed that a num­ber of Kazakhstani enter­pris­es of the ERG are bor­row­ers under loans received from the Development Bank of Kazakhstan and the Eurasian Development Bank, one of the founders of which is the Government of Kazakhstan.

The with­draw­al of mon­ey earned by Kazakhstani enter­pris­es from the sale of the coun­try’s nat­ur­al resources or from loans from the state bank caus­es enor­mous dam­age to the repub­lic’s economy.

In addi­tion, in prin­ci­ple, the ques­tion aris­es of the expe­di­en­cy and legal­i­ty of the that the ERG is reg­is­tered in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, since almost 68,000 of the ERG’s employ­ees or more than 94% of its staff work at the ERG enter­pris­es in Kazakhstan. Does not this cir­cum­stance cre­ates con­di­tions for com­mit­ting cor­rup­tion offences?

We believe that all inter­nal cor­po­rate deci­sions that led to these facts are sig­nif­i­cant and couldn’t be made with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the Board of Directors of the ERG. At var­i­ous times these func­tions were per­formed by the for­mer mem­bers of the Government, Mr. Marat Beketaev, Mr. Bakhyt Sultanov and Mr. Beybut Atamkulov.

We believe that in these cas­es, the indi­cat­ed per­sons com­mit­ted crim­i­nal offences under Part 4 of Art. 370 and part 1 of Art. 371 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and caused sig­nif­i­cant harm to the inter­ests of the State.

In this regard, we ask you opendemocracy to check the activ­i­ties of the above-men­tioned rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Directors for cor­rup­tion offences, reg­is­ter this appli­ca­tion in the auto­mat­ed data­base of crim­i­nal offences, ini­ti­ate a crim­i­nal case, pros­e­cute those respon­si­bly, rec­og­nize the Republic of Kazakhstan as a vic­tim and tell us the reg­is­tra­tion num­ber of the crim­i­nal case.

We have been warned on crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty under Art. 419 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Elge Qaitaru Foundation