the head of the national security committee of

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/