Not Elbasy

How rich is the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev

Everything suggests that a real change of power has taken place in Kazakhstan. In the last couple of weeks, there were first peaceful protests in the country, then bandit pogroms with shooting and an incomprehensible number of victims, after which foreign, mainly Russian, troops were brought there. Order has been restored, the troops are about to leave, and the leader of the nation (elbasy) Nursultan Nazarbayev has never appeared in public. Moreover, at the height of the events, the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev, who until now was considered at best the second person in the state, dismissed Elbasy Nazarbayev from his official position as Chairman of the Security Council.

The founder and first president of independent Kazakhstan ruled the country for almost 30 years. During this time, his family and friends became billionaires. Suffice it to say that the Elbasy’s middle daughter and her husband are on the Forbes list of the richest people, and their overseas real estate is legendary. During recent events, it was reported that Nazarbayev’s youngest daughter withdrew more than $300 million from Kazakhstan through offshore companies, bought a plane, a luxurious house in London and a stake in a Swiss bank.

And what does Kassym-Jomart Tokayev have? He recently became president when, in 2019, Nazarbayev decided to retire, retaining the levers of government. No major assets of Tokayev were known. “Important Stories” investigated the issue and came to the conclusion that Tokayev is, of course, not a poor person, but definitely not Nazarbayev yet.

His family has real estate in Geneva, and in Moscow, and in Miami, but it still costs not billions, but rather a dozen or two million dollars. There is also a business, but nothing much is known about it. There was a small oil company, but it closed. There is a company with a license for tungsten, but it has not started mining yet. Of course, now that Tokayev has become a real president, a great future opens up for his family. Moreover, some of its members already hold government posts and leadership positions in state-owned companies of the republic.

The Tokayevs have not yet responded to a request from Important Stories sent to the presidential press service.

Property in Europe and America

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was a Soviet official for a long time. He has been making a diplomatic career since the seventies: he graduated from MGIMO, worked in embassies in Singapore and Beijing, as well as in the apparatus of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the nineties, when Kazakhstan became an independent state, Tokayev headed the Kazakh Foreign Ministry and eventually rose to the rank of prime minister. Then he worked in international structures, for several years he was UN Deputy Secretary General and Director General of the UN office in Geneva.

The Swiss business register mentions the current Foundation for Innovative Diplomacy (Fondation pour une Diplomatie Innovante), established in 2013 in Geneva to promote diplomatic science “in order to promote peaceful relations between nations.” Tokaev is still listed as the leader there, along with his son Timur. What the foundation does is unclear, its website has never worked, and the foundation’s twitter has not been updated for more than four years and simply reprinted UN news.

So for the Tokayevs, Geneva is not a foreign city. In 2018, the Scanner Project found an apartment with Timur in a residential area of ​​Geneva in a house on Rue Gilbert-Trollier. According to an extract from the Geneva real estate register, Tokayev Jr. has owned an apartment in this building since 2006. Recently, the Tokayevs have a new neighbor – the matchmaker of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Semyon Vinokurov. The Scanner Project estimated the cost of one apartment in this building at one million Swiss francs (now it is more than 80 million rubles).

In the city of Versoix, on the border of the Swiss cantons of Geneva and Vaud, Timur owns a second apartment in a house overlooking Lake Geneva, he bought this apartment in 2010. An interesting detail can be seen in the Swiss and Kazakh registers: Tokaev’s son changed his surname to Kemel in 2019, at the time when Tokaev Sr. began acting as president (in the registers, Timur Tokaev and Timur Kemel have the same middle name and date of birth. Kemel is the name of the father of the Kazakh president). The Swiss townhouse in the town of Saint-Prex was already recorded on Timur Kemel.

Other relatives of President Tokayev also had foreign assets. In November 2019, he appointed the ambassadors of Kazakhstan. The post of ambassador to Bulgaria was retained by a diplomat who has been working in Europe since the nineties – Temirtai Izbastin, the husband of the president’s sister Karlyga Tokaeva. The businesses of this family are connected with Bulgaria, as well as with the Czech Republic and Germany.

Izbastin’s daughter, Tokaev’s niece Dana Medeuova owns three Bulgarian construction companies – SD Property Investments, Dami International and Dami Investment. In 2017, Medeuova transferred almost 700 thousand euros from her personal account to SD Property Investments (at today’s exchange rate, almost 60 million rubles), and the company acquired a land plot in the western part of Sofia opposite the Silver Center shopping center. This lot is still empty.

In the Czech Republic, Dana Medeuova and her brother Beket Izbastin had two companies (Abi Construction Capital and BG Invest Capital). They rented out the property and now do not operate. In Germany, President Karlyga’s sister owned the travel agency Dana Reiseservice.

Relatives of the President of Kazakhstan, most likely, have real estate in the United States. The wife of Tokaev’s nephew, Kanysh Izbastin, is called Botagoz Karbuzov. According to the Miami real estate registry, a person with that name owned an apartment (136 square meters) on the coast in Sunny Isles Beach, which received the nickname “Little Moscow” due to the large concentration of immigrants from Russia. According to the registry, Karbuzova owned an apartment worth over a million dollars through SSS Chateau Beach.

Property in Russia

The Tokaev family is closely connected with Russia: Tokaev’s son Timur, as well as nephews Kanysh and Mohamed, also graduated from MGIMO. Timur and Karlyga Tokayev defended their doctoral dissertations at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry. And Mohamed Tokayev defended his candidate’s thesis there. The president’s sister and ex-wife had Russian passports. And his son Timur traveled around Moscow in Lexus 153 and BMW 750Li X Drive cars with diplomatic numbers.

In Russia, the Tokayev family has real estate worth hundreds of millions of rubles. Alexei Navalny’s team discovered that the authorities had classified real estate data of the Kazakh president’s relatives. Any data on the apartments of the Tokaevs disappeared from Rosreestr. But archival extracts show that Timur Tokayev owned an apartment of 196.6 square meters in a house on Usacheva Street in Moscow in the Fusion Park residential complex. The cost of a square meter here is more than a million rubles, and the entire apartment can be estimated at 229.6 million rubles.

The ex-wife of the Kazakh president, Nadezhda Tokayeva, had a Moscow apartment in a club house on Posledniy Lane, two kilometers from the Kremlin. There are only seven apartments in the building. Tokayeva has a two-level four-room apartment (167.3 square meters) with an approximate cost of 84.6 million rubles. Nadezhda Tokayeva was also registered in a three-room apartment (120 square meters) in Bolshoi Kharitonievsky Lane worth 68.8 million rubles. Finding out who now owns this apartment is difficult. According to Rosreestr, it no longer exists.

In the Moscow region, the ex-wife of Tokayev has had at least five large country houses since 2000. From 2000 to 2014, she owned mansions in elite settlements in the village of Kryukovo, Istra district (193.4 square meters), in the village of Abramtsevo, Sergiev Posad district (146.1 square meters) and the village of Tuchkovo, Ruza district (264.8 square meters) . These houses were sold in different years.

Rosreestr hides information about other real estate. But, according to archival data, in the Moscow region, the Tokaevs had at least two more houses on land plots of 2,000 square meters each: in the village of Alekseevka, Istra district, and in the village of Ashukino, Pushkin district.

Earning at home

In Kazakhstan, some of Tokayev’s relatives have been promoted to senior positions in key state-owned companies. A few months after Tokayev’s appointment as president of the republic in 2019, his nephew Beket Izbastin headed the PSA limited liability partnership. This is a state-owned company, which is the authorized body of the Kazakh government in the division of production at the three largest oil and gas fields – the North Caspian project, the Dunga and Karachaganak fields. Through the PSA company, the state receives its share of the production produced by foreign companies admitted to these fields.

Another nephew of the president, Beket Izbastin’s brother Kanysh Izbastin, is also associated with state-owned companies. From 2015 to 2021, he headed KazAgroFinance, which is engaged in leasing agricultural equipment and lending to the agro-industrial complex. And in March 2021, he became the first deputy chairman of the Baiterek national holding, the main operator of the Kazakh government in state programs for the construction of housing, infrastructure and industrial enterprises.

The Kazakh businesses of Tokayev’s relatives rested on the extraction of natural resources. The son of the President of Kazakhstan, Timur, with his cousin Mukhamed Izbastin, owned the Salish oil and gas company (until 2019 it was called Abi Petroleum Capital) since the beginning of the 2000s. It was liquidated in 2020, and before that it was engaged in the exploration and production of hydrocarbons at the Gryadovoye field in the Atyrau region (the company’s revenue decreased from more than 600 million rubles in 2012 to 280.8 million rubles in 2016).

Timur Tokayev and the president’s sister Karlyga Izbastin also had the Kazakhstan Tungsten & Molybdenum Company. Through its subsidiaries (Karaoba-2005 and Severny Katpar), it obtained a license to mine tungsten in two deposits in the Karaganda region. But, judging by the publications of the Kazakh media, production has not yet begun and the companies are in a difficult financial situation. Karlyga Izbastin also owns a machinery and equipment wholesale company, while Timur Tokayev had several unremarkable construction and engineering companies.

Featuring Elizaveta Tsybulina (Transparency International Russia*) and Atanas Chobanov (BIRD.BG)

Editors: Roman Shleynov, Maxim Solius

Original source of article: https: https://istories.media/