Owner of Bijlmerbajes knew about bribery within his own company

After a tur­bu­lent past in the noto­ri­ous­ly cor­rupt oil indus­try of Kazakhstan, Indian Arvind Tiku is mak­ing a name for him­self as a real estate entre­pre­neur in the Netherlands. A new doc­u­ment obtained by Follow the Money shows that Tiku him­self dis­cov­ered bribery with­in his group of companies.

The trad­ing was the con­cern of the Indian oil bil­lion­aire Arvind Tiku in the blood from a young age. As an exchange stu­dent in the Soviet Union, he start­ed his first busi­ness in leather jack­ets and video recorders. After the fall of the wall, he left for Kazakhstan, where he quick­ly worked his way up to an influ­en­tial trad­er in raw mate­ri­als such as grain and oil. 

The 54-year-old Tiku has been active in the Dutch real estate mar­ket for almost ten years now. He invests in the for­mer V&D build­ing in Haarlem and the UWV office in Breda, among oth­er things, and owns around fifty retail prop­er­ties that he rents to Jumbo. 

One of his most pres­ti­gious real estate invest­ments in the Netherlands is in the Amsterdam Bajeskwartier. In and around the for­mer prison Bijlmerbajes, some 1350 new homes are cur­rent­ly being built, from social rent to pur­chase. Amsterdam prais­es the Bajeskwartier as the ‘urban dis­trict of the future’. 

‘Numerous unlaw­ful and ille­gal pay­ments to civ­il servants’ 

Because real estate invest­ments are con­sis­tent­ly referred to as a ‘mon­ey laun­der­ing threat’ by the Ministry of Justice, Tiku’s com­pa­ny AT Capital for the pur­chase of the Bijlmerbajes test­ed under the law Bibob. This law must pre­vent mon­ey of ques­tion­able ori­gin from being invest­ed in the reg­u­lar economy.

Tiku’s com­pa­ny passed this Bibob pro­ce­dure, but a law­suit at the Singapore Court of Appeal turns out that the Indian bil­lion­aire’s past may be less spot­less than his sta­tus sug­gests. According to Tiku him­self, there was bribery with­in his group of com­pa­nies, short­ly before he invest­ed in the Bajeskwartier.

In 2015, Tiku sued a busi­ness part­ner – Indonesian Tejinder Sayall – part­ly because he had received mon­ey from a Dutch oil company.of Tiku had been used to make ‘numer­ous unlaw­ful’ and ‘ille­gal pay­ments to officials’. 

A doc­u­ment about the case, which Follow the Money found in the Pandora Papers, twelve mil­lion doc­u­ments from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ ), does not state how much mon­ey is involved. Tiku did state in the com­plaint that he suf­fered 90 mil­lion euros in dam­ages from his busi­ness partner.

It is not the first integri­ty issue sur­round­ing Tiku’s group of com­pa­nies to sur­face since he became active in the Dutch real estate mar­ket in 2017. Follow the Money described in an exten­sive pro­file how his tur­bu­lent his­to­ry in the noto­ri­ous­ly cor­rupt Kazakhstan’s oil indus­try con­tin­ues to haunt him. Tiku was a sus­pect in a Swiss crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion between 2010 and 2013. He is said to have laun­dered hun­dreds of mil­lions of euros. A joint ven­ture between him and Vitol, the world’s largest oil trad­er, is now sus­pect­ed of bribery in the Netherlands. 

Accusations

The accu­sa­tions against Tiku relate to his busi­ness rela­tion­ship with the son-in-law of the for­mer pres­i­dent of Kazakhstan, Timur Kulibayev. Together they were active in the oil and gas indus­try in the noughties and both became bil­lion­aires. Kulibayev is said to have used his posi­tion with­in the pres­i­den­tial fam­i­ly to enrich him­self. Tiku is said to have prof­it­ed from this. Kulibayev has been inves­ti­gat­ed sev­er­al times for cor­rup­tion in coun­tries includ­ing Italy and the Netherlands. 

The com­pa­ny where Tiku dis­cov­ered bribery is also a joint ven­ture with the pres­i­den­t’s son-in-law. This is strik­ing because Tiku has been accused on sev­er­al occa­sions of using his com­pa­nies for Kulibayev’s cor­rupt prac­tices. According to crit­ics, Tiku was even a ‘front­man ’ for Kulibayev who ‘shared in the prof­its from time to time (as far as Kulibayev allowed)’. He is said to have repeat­ed­ly called Kulibayev his ‘boss’.

All this was for the Government Real Estate Agency in 2017 no rea­son not to sell the Bijlmerbajes prison to Tiku’s com­pa­ny AT Capital. Due to a duty of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, the Central Government Real Estate Agency does not want to say any­thing about the Bibob inves­ti­ga­tion that was con­duct­ed at the time. It is there­fore not clear whether the Dutch gov­ern­ment was aware of Tiku’s rela­tion­ship with Kulibayev in 2017. However, the Central Government Real Estate Agency did inform Follow the Money that ‘exclud­ing [can­di­dates] in advance, oth­er than because of a com­pelling inter­est (such as nation­al secu­ri­ty), is con­trary to the prin­ci­ple of equality.’ 

When asked, the Central Government Real Estate Agency and the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Amsterdam, which mon­i­tors under­min­ing and integri­ty in the cap­i­tal, said they saw no rea­son to con­duct fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions into Tiku’s assets.

Whistleblower

Tiku him­self has always firm­ly denied that he was part of a cor­rupt net­work sur­round­ing the son-in-law of the Kazakh pres­i­dent. To refute accu­sa­tions, Tiku repeat­ed­ly went to the police suc­cess­ful­ly to court. 

Also in response to ques­tions from Follow the Money, Tiku and his team empha­size that no crim­i­nal acts have ever been dis­cov­ered before. The pre­vi­ous mon­ey laun­der­ing inves­ti­ga­tion was closed in 2013 ‘because no evi­dence of crim­i­nal acts had been found’. Regarding the ongo­ing Dutch inves­ti­ga­tion into Tiku’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Vitol, he says that the same ‘old accu­sa­tions’ that gave rise to the Swiss inves­ti­ga­tion are being inves­ti­gat­ed. The Dutch Public Prosecution Service nei­ther con­firms nor denies this claim and indi­cates that it will not com­ment on the inves­ti­ga­tion at this stage’.

© Luka van Diepen

Despite this, Tiku has sold his oil com­pa­nies in Kazakhstan, due to the ongo­ing legal prob­lems and the accu­sa­tions against him. He now focus­es on real estate and sus­tain­able ener­gy in India and the Netherlands, among oth­er countries. 

Tiku’s com­pa­ny respond­ed to ques­tions from Follow the Money with a remark­able state­ment about how the alleged bribery by Tiku’s busi­ness part­ner came to light. According to the Pandora Papers doc­u­ment, this was after an inter­nal account­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by Tiku’s team itself. But now the com­pa­ny claims that a whistle­blow­er report was received. 

According to Tiku and his team, this report was inves­ti­gat­ed and no crim­i­nal offences were estab­lished. Why Tiku took his for­mer busi­ness part­ner to court, his com­pa­ny does not want to say. 

Follow the Money was unable to con­tact Tiku’s old busi­ness part­ner Sayall.

Author:

Lukas Kotkamp
Internationally ori­ent­ed jour­nal­ist with knowl­edge of fraud, cor­rup­tion and the European Union.

Original full ver­sion arti­cle: Follow the money