Eight days ago, a scandal shook Kazakhstani society: Kuandyk Bishimbayev allegedly escaped from the penal colony where he was serving his sentence. Bishimbayev is a former high-ranking official of the government of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s era, who was sentenced to 24 years in prison for the brutal murder of his wife. The Interior Ministry’s Criminal Correctional System Committee immediately denied this information and said that a criminal case had been opened over the dissemination of this misinformation.

This is not the first time Bishimbayev has become a resident of a penal colony. In 2017, as the Minister of National Economy of Kazakhstan, he was arrested on suspicion of large-scale bribery and embezzlement. In 2018, he was sentenced to a ten-year term with the confiscation of property and deprivation of the right to hold public office for the rest of his life. However, he was released on parole in 2019.

Kazakhstan has been shaken by Bishimbayev’s new crime. The trial, which was broadcast live online for the first time in the country’s history, was watched by millions of citizens, not only within the Republic, but also abroad in other post-Soviet countries, and even in the West.

However, this is not the first and, in all likelihood, not the last sensational case in which a former high-ranking official becomes a defendant. The long list of convicted ministers and akims can be divided chronologically into three parts: the Nazarbayev era, the transition period, and the so-called “New Kazakhstan,” which started after the January Events – the failed coup in 2022. This article discusses the most notorious court cases from each of these periods.

Akezhan Kazhegeldin

Former Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin was a politician known not only in Kazakhstan, but also in the West. He led the Government of Kazakhstan from 1994 to 1997. After falling into disfavor, in 1998 he attempted to challenge Nazarbayev in the upcoming presidential election. Kazhegeldin was not allowed to participate and had to leave Kazakhstan under the pretense of receiving medical treatment in Switzerland for unspecified health problems.

In 1999, Kazhegeldin was put on an international wanted list, and in 2001 he was found guilty in absentia by the Supreme Court of Kazakhstan of abuse of power and authority, extortion and repeated bribes of millions of dollars, illegal acquisitions, the storage and transfer of weapons and ammunition, and tax evasion. Kazhegeldin was sentenced to ten years in prison, but has not returned to the country since. He continued to influence Kazakhstan’s domestic politics from abroad until 2001 through the Republican People’s Party of Kazakhstan, which he organized for this purpose.

It was alleged that Kazhegeldin received kickbacks from a contract awarded to Tractebel in 1996 to run Almaty’s electric company and power grid. A year later, the Belgian company also won a concession to manage gas pipelines in the south and west of Kazakhstan. In the U.S., meanwhile, the DOJ investigated claims Kazhegeldin received illegal payments of $6 million as part of a bribery scandal known as ‘Kazakhgate’. This came as part of a probe into bribes paid by James Giffen to Nazarbayev on behalf of oil companies.

From the sidelines, Kazhegeldin continues to espouse his opinions on the direction his homeland is taking.

Mukhtar Ablyazov and Company

In November 2001, Kazakhstan was shaken by a political crisis, the main manifestation of which was the démarche of a number of young ministers and regional officials of the then government. The prime minister at the time was Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who gave the president an ultimatum to dismiss the “kinder surprises,” as he then called the rebellious officials, or he would resign himself.

The political confrontation continued with the criminal prosecution of the alleged instigators of a riot in the oil town of Zhanaozen – Mukhtar Ablyazov, who was fired from the post of Minister of Energy, and Galymzhan Zhakiyanov, who at the time was in charge of the Pavlodar region. The charges were standard – bribes, abuse of power, and so on. In 2002, both were arrested. The former was sentenced to six years in prison, whilst the latter received seven years.

A year later, Ablyazov was released having addressed a penitential letter to Nazarbayev and promised never to return to politics. Zhakiyanov, meanwhile, served his full term.

Ablyazov fled Kazakhstan in 2008, accused of embezzling money from BTA Bank – the largest retail bank in Kazakhstan at the time – where he was serving as Chairman. Since then, he has been living in exile, periodically attempting to organize political unrest in the Republic. In 2018, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia for organizing the murder of his BTA Bank partner, businessman Yerzhan Tatishev back in 2004. Ablyazov denies his guilt, but relatives of the deceased remain concinved that he was the one who ordered the “accident” during a hunting trip. Moreover, it was after Tatishev’s death that Ablyazov took BTA under his full control. Operating as a bank within a bank from a separate high security section of BTA’s head office, between 2005 and 2009 Ablyazov oversaw the approval of at least $8 billion worth of loans, largely to mailbox entities with no collateral, based in tax havens in which Ablyazov held a significant but almost exclusively anonymous ownership interest.

One cannot help but recall another high-profile case which many associate with Ablyazov – the imprisonment of Mukhtar Dzhakishev.

In 2010, Dzhakishev, the longtime president of state-owned Kazatomprom JSC, was found guilty of misappropriation or embezzlement of “entrusted property” and taking bribes. A court sentenced him to 14 years imprisonment in a high-security penal colony. Two years later, there was another trial on charges of misappropriation of other’s property, fraud, forgery of documents, and abuse of power, which saw Dzhakishev receive another ten years. However, according to Kazakhstani law, the lesser sentence was absorbed by the greater one, meaning the original sentence remained unchanged.

Many at the time believed Dzhakishev had paid the price for vouching for Ablyazov when he promised to stay out of politics. However, after fleeing the country in 2008, Ablyazov admitted he had not stopped secretly funding opposition groups and media. The second case against Dzhakishev followed the aftermath of the attempted uprising in Zhanaozen in Mangistau Oblast, which was organized through Ablyazov’s structures. Another Ablyazov associate, “opposition” politician Vladimir Kozlov spent just under four years in prison for having “provoked” the Zhanaozen tragedy “at the instruction” of Ablyazov.

By 2015, Ablyazov had judgments against him totaling $4.4 billion in the British courts alone, from where he fled to avoid three concurrent 22-month sentences for contempt of court. In December 2022, the Southern District Court in New York ruled against Ablyazov and his associates in the amount of $218 million. In total, Ablyazov stands accused of having embezzled up to $10 billion.

Meanwhile, the former Mayor of Almaty, Viktor Khrapunov, alongside his wife Leila and their son Ilyas – Ablyazov’s son-in-law – have faced allegations of embezzling over $300 million, with legal proceedings taking place in both the UK and U.S. Since fleeing to Switzerland in 2008 with a significant collection of art and valuables, the Khrapunovs have been accused of using shell companies to launder money through international real estate deals. Despite their claims of political persecution, investigations continue in multiple countries, highlighting complex global financial networks and loopholes in anti-money laundering laws, particularly in Switzerland and the Netherlands. In September 2018, a UK court fined Ilyas Khrapunov $500 million for helping Ablyazov breach an asset freezing order.

Further Ministers Fall

In 2008 and 2009, there were a spate of high-profile arrests of acting ministers and other high-ranking government officials. During that period, Nursultan Nazarbayev called on law enforcement agencies to fight corruption uncompromisingly, regardless of positions and connections.

In April 2008, Zhaksybek Kulekeev, head of the national railroad company, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, was arrested and later sentenced to three years for taking bribes and abusing his authority. In the same year, Serik Burkitbayev, head of KazMunayGas – the state-owned oil and gas company of Kazakhstan – and one-time advisor to Nazarbayev, was arrested and convicted of abuse of power, misappropriation of property, and embezzlement.

In 2009, there were the trials of the chairman of the Committee on Water Resources of the Ministry of Agriculture, Anatoly Ryabtsev, and the Deputy Minister of Defense of Kazakhstan, Kazhimurat Maermanov. The latter was initially sentenced to eleven years “for abuse of office when concluding the contract on weapons modernization with an Israeli company.” Maermanov’s sentence was later extended by an additional four years.

The so-called fight against corruption in the highest echelons continued in the following years. In 2010, charges were filed against the head of the Ministry of Health, Zhaksylyk Doskaliyev, which resulted in him apparently suffering a stroke, though investigators claimed he faked the event. Doskaliyev ostensibly fainted when he was accused of embezzling funds allocated for buildings for a medical academy, as well as fraud. He was released under house arrest after several months spent in a pre-trial detention center.

In August 2011, a court sentenced the former minister to seven years in a general security penal colony. In February 2012, President Nazarbayev pardoned Doskaliev, reducing his sentence to two years, but he walked free after just one month.

Another high-ranking prisoner of the Nazarbayev era was the former head of the Government of Kazakhstan, Serik Akhmetov. His case involved 21 people, 12 of whom appealed the court’s decision, including Akhmetov himself. Akhmetov was charged with the embezzlement or misappropriation of entrusted property. In 2015, a trial was held, wherein a sentence of ten years was handed down. Following an appeal and the payment of compensation for damages, the sentence was reduced to eight years. In 2017, Akhmetov was released due to the “replacement of imprisonment with the restriction of freedom.”

Rumors surrounding his sentence suggested that Akhmetov’s arrest and imprisonment were the result of his conflict with the influential Nurlan Nigmatulin, who was part of Nazarbayev’s inner circle. Nigmatulin was First Deputy for the Nur Otan party and served as Chairman of the Mazhilis from January 2012 to April 2014, and again from June 2016 until February 2022. These rumors have never been refuted.

Part two of this TCA special focuses on high-profile cases from the so-called transition period, when, in fact, there was a dual power structure in Kazakhstan. Read it here.