Kazakhstan intelligence chief who was Hunter Biden's 'close friend' and posed with him and Joe is charged with treason during protests that have seen 160 killed and 8,000 arrested

• Karim Massimov ran Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee until he was fired by the coun­try’s embat­tled pres­i­dent late last week
• He and oth­er unnamed intel­li­gence offi­cials were arrest­ed the day after firing
• Hunter Biden once called Massimov a ‘good friend’ in an email from 2016 
• An undat­ed pho­to appears to show Joe and Hunter Biden smil­ing along­side Kazak busi­ness­man Kenes Rakishev as well as Massimov 
• It was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by an anti-cor­rup­tion group called the Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery and has not been inde­pen­dent­ly verified 
• Reports claim that Hunter trav­eled all the way from Paris to Kazakhstan with­out his Secret Service detail in 2014 to dis­cuss a Burisma deal with Massimov 
• The pho­to resur­faced in 2020 after reports claim­ing that emails found on Hunter’s lap­top could impli­cate Joe in his son’s inter­na­tion­al busi­ness dealings 

Kazakhstan’s for­mer intel­li­gence chief Karim Massimov, who Hunter Biden had described as a ‘close friend,’ was arrest­ed last week and charged with high trea­son as vio­lent anti-gov­ern­ment demon­stra­tions there see more than 160 peo­ple killed and near­ly 8,000 more injured. 

Massimov was arrest­ed on Thursday, his own agency announced over the week­end, toward the end of a week of bloody protests sparked by a vir­tu­al­ly overnight spike in fuel prices. 

On Wednesday he was fired from his role head­ing the Kazakhstan National Security Committee by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. He pre­vi­ous­ly served as the coun­try’s prime min­is­ter from 2007 to 2012 and again from 2014 to 2016.

A pho­to unearthed in October 2020 appears to show Joe Biden meet­ing with Massimov and Kenes Rakishev, his son Hunter’s alleged busi­ness part­ner in Kazakhstan. 

Hunter and Massimov report­ed­ly became friend­ly when the then-vice pres­i­den­t’s son served on the board of Ukrainian ener­gy com­pa­ny Burisma and Massimov was in his sec­ond stint as Kazakh prime minister.

The pair met up in Kazakhstan some­time in 2014 to dis­cuss a poten­tial ener­gy deal, emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s lap­top reveal. Hunter alleged­ly skipped out on his Secret Service detail for the pri­vate get-together.

It was in 2016 that the pres­i­den­t’s son called Massimov a ‘close friend.’

Another email from a for­mer aide of John Kerry’s shows Hunter get­ting invit­ed to a ‘pri­vate break­fast’ with Massimov in 2015 by Kazakh banker Marc Holtzman.

‘Prime Minister Massimov will be most delight­ed if you will please join us for a small break­fast at one table at the Willard Hotel, Holmes Suite from 8 am until 9 am,’ Holtzman’s email said. 

The National Security Committee, which Massimov ran until the day before his arrest, is Kazakhstan’s nation­al intel­li­gence agency that replaced the Soviet-era KGB after the USSR collapsed. 

There were no details of the trea­son alle­ga­tions against him. The secu­ri­ty ser­vice said oth­er offi­cials were also detained, but did not name them.

On Friday, a pro-gov­ern­ment politi­cian said on tele­vi­sion he had infor­ma­tion that the secu­ri­ty forces had been ordered to aban­don Almaty air­port so pro­test­ers could take it over. He said they had left a secu­ri­ty build­ing in the city unde­fend­ed, enabling peo­ple to seize weapons.

It was not imme­di­ate­ly pos­si­ble to ver­i­fy this account. The air­port remains closed but is now under the con­trol of Kazakh secu­ri­ty per­son­nel and Russian troops, accord­ing to Russia’s defense ministry. 

Protests that were sparked by a near-dou­bling of gas prices were ini­tial­ly peace­ful when they broke out on January 2. But they quick­ly turned vio­lent, becom­ing a broad­er rebuke against Tokayev’s Russian-backed government.

As of January 10, Kazakh author­i­ties report­ed that 7,939 peo­ple have been detained and 164 peo­ple were con­firmed dead — includ­ing three children.

The undat­ed pho­to­graph of Massimov and the Bidens, pub­lished in an October 2020 report, resur­faced in the wake of a New York Post report claim­ing that emails found on Hunter’s lap­top could pur­port­ed­ly impli­cate Joe in his embat­tled son’s inter­na­tion­al busi­ness deal­ings dur­ing his time as vice president. 

In the image — which was pub­lished on the web­site of an anti-cor­rup­tion group called the Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery and has not been inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied — Joe and Hunter are seen smil­ing along­side Rakishev and Mossimov. 

DailyMail.com lift­ed the lid on Hunter’s alleged rela­tion­ship with Rakishev last week, reveal­ing that between 2012 and 2014 the for­mer VP’s son worked as a sort of go-between help­ing the Kazak busi­ness­man bro­ker US investments. 

Emails passed to The Mail via anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign­ers from the Central Asian coun­try revealed that Hunter held exten­sive meet­ings with Rakishev, who has close fam­i­ly ties to the klep­to­crat­ic regime of his home­land’s despot­ic for­mer pres­i­dent Nursultan Nazarbayev. 

Hunter also trav­eled to the Kazakh cap­i­tal of Astana to hold busi­ness dis­cus­sions with Rakishev, who was appar­ent­ly look­ing to invest a por­tion of his per­son­al for­tune in New York and Washington DC. 

Hunter then attempt­ed to per­suade Rakishev to buy into a Nevadan min­ing com­pa­ny, bro­ker­ing a series of meet­ings with the firm, before con­vinc­ing him to invest a cool mil­lion dol­lars with Alexandra Forbes Kerry, the film-mak­er daugh­ter of Democrat Senator and for­mer Presidential can­di­date John Kerry.

Rakishev, who wrote mes­sages in bro­ken English, appeared to have become inti­mate with the vice pres­i­den­t’s son, call­ing Hunter ‘my broth­er!’ and ‘my broth­er from anoth­er mother!’

They shared gos­sip about their fam­i­ly hol­i­days and dined togeth­er at lux­u­ry restau­rants in New York and Washington DC (‘I’m on vaca­tion with fam­i­ly [at] Lake Michigan … try­ing to spend some much need­ed time with my wife and daugh­ters. It’s my 20th anniver­sary of mar­riage tomor­row,’ Hunter told Rakishev in July 2013).

The unver­i­fied pho­to fueled spec­u­la­tion that Hunter may have dragged his father into the oli­garch’s orbit as well — deep­en­ing a long-stand­ing con­tro­ver­sy over Hunter’s over­seas busi­ness deal­ings when Joe was VP.

Hunter has for years been crit­i­cized for his lucra­tive but eth­i­cal­ly ques­tion­able work over­seas, which has often cre­at­ed appar­ent con­flicts of inter­est with Joe’s offi­cial roles. 

The Biden cam­paign was rocked by a vin­tage ‘October sur­prise’ last week when a New York Post expose claimed that Hunter’s lap­top was aban­doned at the com­put­er shop in April 2019 for months and was found to con­tain emails that could impli­cate Joe. 

The lap­top’s hard dri­ve was obtained by Donald Trump’s per­son­al lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who shared its con­tents with the Post. 

Senior fed­er­al offi­cials told Fox News on Tuesday that the FBI is now in pos­ses­sion of the com­put­er and con­firmed that Hunter’s emails are ‘authen­tic’.  

The emails indi­cat­ed that Hunter intro­duced his father Vadym Pozharskyi of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian ener­gy com­pa­ny that Hunter served on the board of, in 2015. 

The pur­port­ed meet­ing alleged­ly took place a year before Joe pres­sured Ukrainian gov­ern­ment offi­cials to fire the pros­e­cu­tor involved in an inves­ti­ga­tion of Burisma. 

In one email, Pozharskyi wrote: ‘Dear Hunter, thank you for invit­ing me to DC and giv­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet your father and spent some time togeth­er. It’s real­ty [sic] an hon­or and pleasure.’ 

The email did not state that the two actu­al­ly met, and the Biden cam­paign respond­ed that ‘we have reviewed Joe Biden’s offi­cial sched­ules from the time and no meet­ing, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.’ 

But the cam­paign lat­er con­ced­ed that they could­n’t rule out that the meet­ing may have happened. 

Other emails pur­port­ed­ly sent by Hunter showed him lever­ag­ing his dad’s office to boost his pay on Burisma’s board. 

The FBI has declined to con­firm whether or not it is exam­in­ing Hunter’s lap­top and its contents. 

It comes hours after for­mer President Trump demand­ed that Attorney General Bill Barr ‘act fast’ and appoint a spe­cial coun­sel to probe his Democratic rival before Election Day.

Trump called for Barr to appoint some­one to probe the lap­top, which has become the sub­ject of repeat­ed Trump attacks on his rival after Giuliani hand­ed over the con­tents to the Post. 

The ex-pres­i­dent said it revealed ‘major cor­rup­tion’ and that it has to come out before the election.

Trump has yet to spec­i­fy what crime he believes the Bidens have com­mit­ted, but that has not stopped him from going as far as sug­gest­ing to vot­ers that Biden belongs in jail. 

His demand would appear to run smack into a Justice Department pol­i­cy against tak­ing actions that would inter­fere in an elec­tion – an issue that played out in 2016 in both the Hillary Clinton email probe and the then-unknown Russia probe.

‘We’ve got to get the attor­ney gen­er­al to act. He’s got to act. And he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint some­body,’ Trump said when asked about nam­ing a spe­cial coun­sel on Fox & Friends. 

Who is Kenes Rakishev? The Kazak businessman who ‘hired Hunter Biden as a go-between for brokering US investments’ 

Reporting by Guy Adams for The Daily Mail 

Kenes Rakishev’s rela­tion­ship with Hunter Biden was laid bare in emails obtained by the Daily Mail last week amid a deep­en­ing scan­dal sur­round­ing Hunter’s over­seas busi­ness dealings. 

The Mail revealed that between 2012 and 2014, Hunter worked as a sort of go-between for Rakishev, a self-styled ‘inter­na­tion­al busi­ness­man, investor and entre­pre­neur’ with close fam­i­ly con­nec­tions to the klep­to­crat­ic regime of his home­land’s despot­ic for­mer pres­i­dent Nursultan Nazarbayev. 

In the UK, Rakishev is per­haps best known due to a bizarre 2008 episode when he’d helped a fel­low oli­garch chum called Timur Kulibayev use a firm reg­is­tered in the British Virgin Islands buy a home from Prince Andrew: his Windsor man­sion Sunninghill Park, which odd­ly went for £15million, some £3million over the ask­ing price.

Coverage of the episode had not­ed that Kulibayev was the son-in-law of the afore­men­tioned despot Nazarbayev, who ruled Kazakhstan for more than two decades, turn­ing it into one of the world’s most cor­rupt kleptocracies.

Rakishev, for his part, is mar­ried to the daugh­ter of a for­mer may­or of the coun­try’s cap­i­tal city (recent­ly re-named ‘Nursultan,’ after the elder­ly despot), who lat­er served as its Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. 

Fast for­ward to 2012 and Rakishev had just joined Forbes mag­a­zine’s top-15 list of Kazakhstan’s ‘most influ­en­tial’ tycoons, with esti­mat­ed assets of some $332million. Like many an oli­garch in pos­ses­sion of a huge for­tune, Rakishev was now look­ing for a safe place to park it, so had come to America in search of new places to invest his hard-earned roubles.

Sadly, things had­n’t gone entire­ly smooth­ly. For in the high­ly-reg­u­lat­ed world of Western cap­i­tal­ism, Rakishev dis­cov­ered that blue-chip invest­ment part­ners were often reluc­tant to take his cash.

To blame? The fact that no one was entire­ly sure where his wealth actu­al­ly came from.

For exam­ple, the leaked emails obtained by the Mail show that the International Finance Corporation, a high­ly respectable sis­ter organ­i­sa­tion of the World Bank, held pre­lim­i­nary talks with Rakishev about a busi­ness col­lab­o­ra­tion, before decid­ing to pull out.

The IFC then polite­ly informed the oli­garch that it ‘can­not invest with him’ because its ‘very deep due dili­gence process­es’ had estab­lished that he had some ‘con­nec­tions’ involv­ing the ‘pres­i­den­t’s fam­i­ly’ that ‘are a lia­bil­i­ty to us’.

Seemingly out­raged, Rakishev respond­ed that he would ensure that the orga­ni­za­tion ‘nev­er works in Kazakhstan with anyone.’

The United States Department of Justice then took an inter­est in Rakishev. It soon dragged him into an inves­ti­ga­tion of poten­tial breach­es the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act relat­ed to ‘an invest­ment in the oil and gas indus­try in Kazakhstan’.

Though Rakishev imme­di­ate­ly denied all wrong­do­ing, and no charges were ever filed, in September 2013 he decid­ed to hire a noto­ri­ous­ly expen­sive US law firm called Greenberg Traurig to deal with incom­ing fire relat­ed to the probe.

It seems that two attor­neys who led a team work­ing the Kazakh’s case, John Pappalardo and Stanford Saunders, charged him in the region of $1,000 and $700 per hour respectively.

It was, doubt­less, a very annoy­ing (and expen­sive) busi­ness; not to men­tion high­ly frus­trat­ing for a man who had per­haps grown used to get­ting his own way. Which is per­haps what per­suad­ed him to take meet­ings with Hunter Biden, a mem­ber of one of America’s most pow­er­ful polit­i­cal dynasties.

In May 2012, he was emailed by Hunter’s busi­ness part­ner Devon Archer, a lawyer and for­mer Abercrombie & Fitch mod­el. ‘Can you have din­ner with me, Hunter Biden, Alex [Forbes Kerry] and team on Wednesday next week in NYC? I want to let Hunter know when he should come up from DC to see you on Wednesday. Looking for­ward to see­ing you!’

Rakishev replied: ‘Hi Devon! I would be hap­py to have a din­ner with you and all our friends! Thank you very much for invi­ta­tions! Take care my brother!’

By July, Hunter had trav­elled to Astana to dis­cuss busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. ‘I want­ed to check in with you and see what our next steps are to fol­low up on our vis­it to Kazakhstan,’ he wrote in an email to Rakishev sent short­ly after­wards. ‘Let me know if you need any­thing from me.’

Three months lat­er, Biden was help­ing Rakishev hold dis­cus­sions about invest­ing in Prospect Global Resources, a potash min­ing firm based in east­ern Arizona.

Although the emails the Mail has seen show that the talks even­tu­al­ly broke down, he remained on friend­ly terms: ‘I want­ed to reach back out to you and con­tin­ue our con­ver­sa­tions,’ Hunter wrote to Kulibayev on November 25, 2012. 

‘I under­stand you and Timur eval­u­at­ed PGRX but it was not a good fit at this time. Thank you for tak­ing a look at it and for the quick feed­back as well. Let me know when you’d like to connect.’

The duo remained in close con­tact through­out the fol­low­ing year, dis­cussing a range of busi­ness ventures.

Then, in late October 2013, Biden’s part­ner Archer arranged a con­fer­ence call between Rakishev and the afore­men­tioned Alex Forbes Kerry, who was by then attempt­ing to raise cash to launch a film pro­duc­tion firm.

Immediately after the call that December, Rakishev emailed with hap­py news: ‘Thank you my broth­er from anoth­er moth­er! Thanks you very much my broth­er! We decid­ed to invest 1 mln [mil­lion]! Give them my email!’

Forbes Kerry, who has nev­er pub­licly acknowl­edged her debt to Rakishev, finalised the deal in January 2014. The fol­low­ing month, she and Biden met Rakishev for din­ner in Washington DC.

‘It was a plea­sure to meet you with Devon and Hunter the oth­er day,’ she told him by email after­wards. ‘I want to thank you for the beau­ti­ful watch! I am sor­ry I did­n’t open it at the table. I mis­un­der­stood and thought it was a baby present so I only opened it when I was at home. It is absolute­ly beau­ti­ful and you are so gen­er­ous … Please come to New York soon and bring your fam­i­ly. We will host you and your team.’

Rakishev respond­ed that he intend­ed to take up that offer in September. ‘Let’s be in touch!’ he wrote.

Sadly, at the time of this hap­py exchange, Biden’s mar­riage was in the process of break­ing down. Things cul­mi­nat­ed in a spec­tac­u­lar­ly hos­tile divorce in which his wife Kathleen claimed he had spent ‘extrav­a­gant­ly on his own inter­ests (includ­ing drugs, alco­hol, pros­ti­tutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sex­u­al rela­tions), while leav­ing the fam­i­ly with no mon­ey to pay legit­i­mate bills’. 

Original source of arti­cle: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/n