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