The Kazakh president’s underground business passed through Switzerland

Unpublished doc­u­ments reveal how Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the cur­rent President of Kazakhstan and for­mer Director General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, dis­crete­ly owned assets linked to the extrac­tion of oil and strate­gic met­als in the mid-2010s, pos­si­bly in vio­la­tion of Kazakh law. Tokayev was able to car­ry out his under­ground busi­ness deal­ings thanks to his son, a busi­ness­man resid­ing in Geneva. Nearly USD 1.8 mil­lion was deposit­ed in an account at the Julius Bär bank in Zurich. The affair shows how Switzerland attracts the Central Asian elite and show­cas­es a busi­ness mod­el of wel­com­ing wealth from opaque ori­gins with open arms, despite repeat­ed scandals.

One side of the coin is an astute diplo­mat, Director General of the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) from 2011 to 2013, described by his col­leagues as a cul­tured indi­vid­ual who, in his spare time, writes books and pub­lish­es media arti­cles vaunt­ing the mer­its of mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism. On the oth­er side, there is a man with an iron will, brought in as pres­i­dent by his pre­de­ces­sor Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2019. During the January 2022 riots in Almaty (the busi­ness cap­i­tal of Kazakhstan), he gave the order for live rounds to be fired at demon­stra­tors who were protest­ing against the increase in gas prices. According to offi­cial fig­ures 232 peo­ple were killed.

©Keystone/AP Photo/Vladimir Tretyakov

During unrests in Almaty in January 2022, Kazakhstan’s pres­i­dent Kassym-Jomart Tokayev gave the order to shoot to kill those par­tic­i­pat­ing in anti-gov­ern­ment protests.

A businessman in the shadows

This gulf between the two sides of the coin is no longer a secret. However, anoth­er dimen­sion of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has remained in the shad­ows to date – that of a sea­soned busi­ness­man who hides behind close asso­ciates to secret­ly man­age his oil and strate­gic met­als assets and whose rev­enues have been deposit­ed in numer­ous bank accounts in Switzerland. It is a rather sur­pris­ing pro­file for this great ser­vant of the state who spent his entire career in the pub­lic sec­tor, act­ing first as Minister of Foreign Affairs, then as Prime Minister, President of the Upper Chamber (the Senate) and sub­se­quent­ly the Lower Chamber (Majilis) of the Kazakh par­lia­ment, before being elect­ed President (see his biog­ra­phy below). This busi­ness could con­sti­tute a vio­la­tion of Kazakh laws – those that pro­hib­it senior pub­lic ser­vants from engag­ing in com­mer­cial activ­i­ties and hold­ing more than 5% of shares in com­pa­nies, and those that ban par­lia­men­tar­i­ans from engag­ing in com­mer­cial activ­i­ties, also par­tic­u­lar­ly from man­ag­ing companies.

Nevertheless, the cur­rent Kazakh pres­i­dent presents him­self as deter­mined to put an end to the dubi­ous prac­tices of the Nazarbayev era. The day after the bloody Almaty riots, he stat­ed “Thanks to the first pres­i­dent (Ed. Nazarbayev) we have seen the appear­ance of a group of very prof­itable com­pa­nies and a group of very rich peo­ple, even by inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, in our coun­try. I think it’s time to reim­burse the peo­ple of Kazakhstan”. To restore his vir­gin­i­ty, he decid­ed to call ear­ly pres­i­den­tial elec­tions on 20 November 2022, which he described as a “rad­i­cal reset of the entire polit­i­cal system”.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a great offi­cial serv­ing the state

• 1994–1999: Minister of Foreign Affairs 
• 1999–2003: Prime Minister 
• 2003 and 2007: Minister of Foreign Affairs 
• 2007 to 2011: President of the Senate 
• March 2011-October 2013: Director General of the UN Office at Geneva 
• 2013 to March 2019: President of the Senate 
• 20 March 2019: he is appoint­ed inter­im pres­i­dent fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Nursultan Nazarbayev. 
• April 2019: elect­ed pres­i­dent with 70.8% of the votes 

We dis­cov­ered what was going on behind the scenes after we received emails from the future pres­i­dent and his son Timur, which were hacked in 2014. Two of the hacked emails show­ing the close rela­tions between the Tokayevs and the Nazarbayev fam­i­ly had already been pub­lished in 2016 in the Kazakh oppo­si­tion paper Respublika, and three years lat­er on the web­site Kazakhstan 2.0. At the time, the indi­vid­u­als con­cerned nei­ther respond­ed pub­licly nor denied the authen­tic­i­ty of the emails. Public Eye obtained access to thou­sands of emails, writ­ten in Russian and English between 2006 and 2014, with attach­ments. In order to ensure their verac­i­ty, we man­dat­ed a rep­utable Swiss com­put­er exper­tise com­pa­ny. The lat­ter analysed sev­er­al files and con­clud­ed that they “found noth­ing sus­pi­cious that could indi­cate manip­u­la­tion of the e‑mails”. These files also con­firm, by deep­en­ing them, infor­ma­tion already brought to light in inves­ti­ga­tions that had not had access to these leaks.

These emails open the door to the secrets of the Tokayev fam­i­ly – and make it pos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy their con­tacts in Switzerland.

Lawyers, trustees and bankers, real estate agents and inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tors – over ten pro­fes­sion­als in Geneva, Zurich, Basel and Ticino have rolled out the red car­pet, seem­ing­ly with­out ask­ing too many ques­tions. In the cor­re­spon­dence, it appears that the influ­en­tial Kazakh fam­i­ly repa­tri­at­ed to Switzerland part of the prof­its they made in Kazakhstan; we were able to doc­u­ment a trans­fer to a bank account at Julius Bär in Zurich, held by an off­shore com­pa­ny con­trolled by the Tokayevs.

The tra­di­tion of wel­com­ing cen­tral Asian elites, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Kazakhstan, is well estab­lished in Switzerland. The for­mer pres­i­dent Nursultan Nazarbayev’s clan and oth­er con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures from Kazakhstan have made them­selves com­fort­able for sev­er­al decades – and despite sev­er­al scan­dals the prac­tices in Switzerland have not changed.

Read about this top­ic: “Swiss-Kazakhstan – a long and scan­dalous love story”

The game of two families

L’une des seules pho­tos con­nues de Timour Tokaïev.©yyedilov / Telegram

In the Tokayev fam­i­ly, Timur is the only son, born in 1984. He has been a Geneva res­i­dent for over two decades and has an inter­est­ing pro­file. When his father was elect­ed pres­i­dent of Kazakhstan in April 2019 with 70.8% of the vote, sev­er­al Kazakh and Russian media out­lets took an inter­est in the nat­u­ralised Swiss (as we dis­cov­ered) businessman’s daz­zling career. In February 2022, the OCCRP, a con­sor­tium of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists that includes the online news out­let Vlast from Kazakhstan, revealed in the con­text of the inter­na­tion­al Suisse Secrets Investigation that he was only 14 years old when in 1998 a bank account at Credit Suisse was opened in his and his mother’s name, Nadezhda Tokayeva. The Kazakh fam­i­ly already appre­ci­at­ed the advan­tages offered by the love­ly Switzerland.

The young man was edu­cat­ed at Collège du Léman, a swanky pri­vate school in Versoix, near Geneva. He then stud­ied at the Webster University in Geneva before join­ing the pres­ti­gious acad­e­my of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow. There, he wrote a dis­ser­ta­tion on ‘the Republic of Kazakhstan’s strat­e­gy vis-à-vis the West’ in which the name of the auto­crat­ic pres­i­dent Nursultan Nazarbayev, at the time in pow­er for 20 years, appears 112 times.

However, polit­i­cal sci­ences were not his only pas­sion – in 2013 the Kazakh press revealed that, at the age of 18 in 2002, Timur Tokayev took on a 50% share­hold­ing in a com­pa­ny called Abi Petroleum Capital. While his father was on the brink of con­clud­ing his tenure as Prime Minister to take up his appoint­ment as Minister of Foreign Affairs, this small com­pa­ny obtained an explo­ration and sub­se­quent­ly an exploita­tion license for the Gradovoye oil field (blocks XXVI) sit­u­at­ed near the city of Novobogatinskiy in the region of Atyrau, in west­ern Kazakhstan. The oth­er own­er of Abi Petroleum Capital was Muhammed Izbastin, Timur’s cousin. He is the son of the diplo­mat Temirtay Izbastin, mar­ried to the sis­ter of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and cur­rent­ly serv­ing as ambas­sador to Bulgaria.

“My price is 10 pieces”

That’s for the share­hold­ers on paper. However, in the leaked emails we had access to, it appears that the future Kazakh pres­i­dent was also one of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Abi Petroleum Capital. He pri­mar­i­ly con­veyed his con­cerns and advice on man­ag­ing the asset to his nephew Muhammed Izbastin, who was based in Kazakhstan. On 30 December 2012, when he held the pres­ti­gious post of Director General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev seems to have been wor­ry­ing about the future of this small petro­le­um com­pa­ny that, in that year, had made prof­its of KZT 890 mil­lion (Kazakh tenge, the equiv­a­lent to USD 5.8 mil­lion at the time). He writes:

“Muhammed! The envi­ron­ment for oil is in con­stant decline and the out­look is not good. What do you think about sell­ing the asset? That would enable us to enter oth­er, more promis­ing sectors.”

A few weeks lat­er, the diplo­mat says he needs mon­ey urgent­ly. He explains that he is in con­tact with some­one who can help sell, some­one influ­en­tial with­in the Nazarbayev clan. He writes “As I’ve already said, I want to leave Abi. My price is 10 pieces (Ed. USD 10 mil­lion) plus 2 (Ed. USD 2 mil­lion) for a late pay­ment”, com­plain­ing that he received “irreg­u­lar” month­ly pay­ments from the com­pa­ny in 2009 and 2010. He deplores a “sham­bol­ic” sit­u­a­tion. His nephew responds that “10 mil­lion for 50% of the shares is too high”, but that a poten­tial buy­er – whose iden­ti­ty is not revealed in the emails – could be interested.

Extract from the email exchange between Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and his nephew, Muhammed Izbastin.

Currently, Abi Petroleum Capital seems to have been put to bed. Its web­site has been dis­ac­ti­vat­ed. The appli­ca­tion Wayback Machine nonethe­less gives access to sev­er­al screen shots, the last of which is dat­ed July 2014. The doc­u­ments we obtained do not reveal whether Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was able to get the mil­lions he was hop­ing for.

Four suspicious transfers to Julius Bär

In any case, the small petro­le­um com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed the Tokayevs with non-neg­lige­able rev­enues and, as we dis­cov­ered, part of the prof­its gen­er­at­ed in Kazakhstan found their way to Switzerland. In autumn 2012, Tokayev son opened an account at the pri­vate bank Julius Bär in Zurich. The account hold­er was an off­shore com­pa­ny called Edelweiss Resources LLP. Bank state­ments show that between 11 October 2012 and 25 February 2013, Abi Petroleum Capital made four trans­fers totalling USD 1.76 mil­lion to the com­pa­ny, which was new­ly reg­is­tered in London.

In the emails we went through, it appears that at the start of 2012, Timur Tokayev wrote to the Zurich branch of Trident Trust to set up an opaque off­shore com­pa­ny. A vir­tu­oso in pro­vid­ing these kinds of ser­vices, the fidu­cia­ry glob­al­ly known for serv­ing large for­tunes – and whose name has been cit­ed in numer­ous jour­nal­is­tic inves­ti­ga­tions – respond­ed to the request. It reg­is­tered Edelweiss Resources LLP in the UK as a com­pa­ny whose pur­pose are “con­struc­tion activ­i­ties in Russia”. The com­pa­ny itself is held by two oth­er com­pa­nies, reg­is­tered short­ly before­hand in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), name­ly Wisdom Invest & Finance Inc and Wishing Well Group Inc. Timur Tokayev is indeed the own­er of Edelweiss Resources, but only the names of the two com­pa­nies reg­is­tered in the BVI appear in the British reg­is­ter. The International Consortium Of Investigative Journalists ICIJ’s great Suisse Secrets inves­ti­ga­tion already not­ed the exis­tence of off­shore enti­ties used by the Tokayev fam­i­ly, with­out how­ev­er get­ting to the bot­tom of the mystery.

The com­pa­ny struc­ture of Edelweiss Resources LLP with two “des­ig­nat­ed part­ners”: Wishing Well Group lnc and Wisdom Invest & Finance Inc. Company pur­pose is “con­struc­tion busi­ness in Russia”.

But why did the Tokayevs set up Edelweiss Resources LLP and what is the con­nec­tion to the family’s petro­le­um company?

Smells like an odd contract

In the leaked emails, we retrieved a con­tract that appears to have served to jus­ti­fy the arrival of the funds at Julius Bär in Zurich. Signed in 2012 between Edelweiss and Abi Petroleum – both com­pa­nies, once again, con­trolled by Timur Tokayev, with the secret involve­ment of his father Kassym-Jomart in Abi Petroleum in the back­ground – the doc­u­ment stip­u­lat­ed that Edelweiss would be paid to pro­vide ser­vices to enable Abi Petroleum to unload its oil ship­ments at Primorsk port, the large Russian oil ter­mi­nal sit­u­at­ed on the Baltic Sea coast, approx­i­mate­ly 100km from Saint Petersburg. 

More specif­i­cal­ly, the small British com­pa­ny would under­take the stor­age and pro­tec­tion of Abi Petroleum’s mer­chan­dise and exchange with the port author­i­ties. There are numer­ous ques­tions con­cern­ing the true cir­cum­stances around the con­tract. First and fore­most, there is no expla­na­tion as to why a British com­pa­ny offi­cial­ly involved in con­struc­tion activ­i­ties in Russia would be tasked with pro­vid­ing ser­vices of a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent nature in a Russian oil port. The fact that the con­tract was signed between two com­pa­nies owned by the same own­ers – one of which was set up short­ly before the con­tract was signed – also rais­es suspicions.

Service con­tract between Edelweiss Resources LLP and Abi Petroleum Capital LLP.

Service con­tract between Edelweiss Resources LLP and Abi Petroleum Capital LLP.
The doc­u­ments we accessed show that Julius Bär sup­port­ed and act­ed as a guar­an­tor for this oper­a­tion, in direct col­lab­o­ra­tion with Trident Trust. Exchanges of emails reveal that in July 2012, a banker at the Swiss estab­lish­ment was invit­ed to Moscow by Timur Tokayev — at the time the banker sent him the con­tract between Edelweiss and Abi Petroleum. This seems to have enabled the Tokayevs to keep their petro­le­um prof­its safe in Switzerland and to acquire new assets. According to the doc­u­ments in our pos­ses­sion, a part of this mon­ey then served to facil­i­tate the pur­chase of shares in Apple and Uranium One (a sub­sidiary of the Russian state’s nuclear giant Rosatom) as well as the acqui­si­tion of shares in an invest­ment fund focused on ura­ni­um production.

In an email sent to his son on 24 February 2013, the future pres­i­dent of Kazakhstan men­tions pay­ments made by Abi Petrolum to Edelweiss in 2012, along­side oth­er sums (in cash?) that he received that year via his nephew. The pay­ments total over USD 4 million.

Red flags ignored

Did Julius Bär and Trident Trust know that the father was hid­ing behind the son? When con­tact­ed, Julius Bär respond­ed that it could not “dis­close infor­ma­tion on real or pre­sumed client rela­tions”. The fidu­cia­ry respond­ed that “the Trident Trust group does not dis­cuss its clients with the media but sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly coop­er­ates with all respon­si­ble author­i­ties that request information”.

Numerous signs should have alert­ed the two estab­lish­ments’ com­pli­ance ser­vices – first­ly the fact that Kazakhstan is a high risk coun­try for cor­rup­tion (ranked 133rd of 176 coun­tries on Transparency International’s Corruptions Perceptions Index in 2012); and the fact that it is known that the chil­dren of high-rank­ing pub­lic offi­cials and mem­bers of par­lia­ment often hold sig­nif­i­cant wealth in bank accounts on behalf of their par­ents, due to the Kazakh law pre­vent­ing the lat­ter from engag­ing in busi­ness activ­i­ties along­side their careers in ser­vice of the state.

Back in 2012, Swiss banks and finan­cial inter­me­di­aries already had extend­ed due dili­gence oblig­a­tions in rela­tion to Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) – a cat­e­go­ry that unques­tion­ably includes Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and his son giv­en the former’s state func­tions. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) ordi­nance on mon­ey laun­der­ing also required them to ver­i­fy the iden­ti­ty of the ben­e­fi­cial own­ers of com­pa­nies, to iden­ti­fy any Politically Exposed Persons and to clar­i­fy the eco­nom­ic back­ground to all trans­ac­tions, in par­tic­u­lar those that appear unusu­al – like those of the trans­fers from Abi Petroleum to Edelweiss Resources.

Swiss bankers’ belly dancing

However, instead of becom­ing the sub­ject of increased scruti­ny, on its jour­ney the Kazakh fam­i­ly encoun­tered amenable facil­i­ta­tors whose mot­to seemed to be ‘Let’s ask as few ques­tions as pos­si­ble’. At the end of 2009, Timur, who was only 25 years old, was court­ed by var­i­ous bankers. One of them was employed by KBL (Switzerland) Ltd, a small bank then locat­ed at Boulevard George-Favon in Geneva. The young Kazakh trans­ferred the share port­fo­lio pre­vi­ous­ly lodged at Credit Suisse under his mother’s name, Nadezhda Tokayeva, to this dis­creet estab­lish­ment that would be bought in 2015 by BIL, the Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (Switzerland) SA. The oper­a­tion was com­plet­ed in ear­ly 2010, despite sev­er­al anom­alies – in numer­ous exchanges a Credit Suisse banker remind­ed Timur that they were still await­ing instruc­tions from ‘“Nadezhda” to close the account, accept­ing nonethe­less to trans­fer the shares to KBL with­out wait­ing for her agree­ment. A bank doc­u­ment shows that at the time the port­fo­lio was worth USD 507,647, com­prised of invest­ments in oil (near­ly 40%), mines and steel (46%).

Numerous email exchanges show that the KBL banker, who went on to con­tin­ue his career with­in anoth­er bank at Geneva and to main­tain excel­lent rela­tions with the Tokayevs, bent over back­wards to attract these funds.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Credit Suisse stat­ed that it “does not com­ment on poten­tial client rela­tion­ships” but said that it “oper­ates its busi­ness in com­pli­ance with laws and reg­u­la­tions in all mar­kets in which it oper­ates includ­ing with regard to Politically Exposed Persons” and takes actions in line with applic­a­ble poli­cies and reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments when it finds “signs of mis­use of an account for illic­it activ­i­ties”. BIL says it is not in a posi­tion to answer our ques­tions, tak­ing refuge behind bank­ing secrecy.

©Keystone/EPA Photo/Anatoly Ustinenko

In March 2001, Tokayev (left), then Prime Minister, inau­gu­rates an oil pipeline in the region of Atyrau in Western Kazakhstan. One year lat­er, the com­pa­ny Abi Petroleum Capital is reg­is­tered by his son and his nephew. The com­pa­ny had a license to explore and exploit the Gradovoye oil field near the town of Novobogatinskiy.

Stake in a mining group and a mysterious payment to Geneva

The Kazakh fam­i­ly was not only a keen play­er in the min­ing mar­ket. Tokayev father and son as well as their nephew Muhammed Izbastin were also ben­e­fi­cial own­ers of the Kazakhstan Tungsten & Molybdenum Company (KTMC). This is shown by numer­ous emails and attach­ments. The min­ing group was reg­is­tered in 2007. It includ­ed two com­pa­nies that held exploita­tion licens­es for the Karaoba and North Kaptar tung­sten and molyb­de­num deposits in the Karaganda region in cen­tral Kazakhstan, as well as a hydro-met­al­lur­gic fac­to­ry at Stepnogorsk that processed the ores, which have numer­ous indus­tri­al applications.

An email writ­ten by Muhammed to his uncle Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (then pres­i­dent of the Kazakh Senate) shows that in sum­mer 2009, the fam­i­ly trio owned 50% of KTMC’s shares, but had only paid USD 6.5 mil­lion on the agreed sales price of USD 30 mil­lion. The sell­ers, three Kazakh busi­ness­men, had accept­ed that the new arrivals would only pay their full due once their share had been resold.

KTMC was going through some tur­bu­lence at the time. Following the theft of poten­tial­ly haz­ardous mate­ri­als from its hydro-met­al­lur­gic fac­to­ry in Stepnogorsk in sum­mer 2007, a crim­i­nal pro­ce­dure had been launched, paralysing its activ­i­ties for sev­er­al months and forc­ing it to put its work­ers on tech­ni­cal unemployment.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was called in to help in his capac­i­ty as President of the Senate. On 1 November 2007, the com­mu­ni­ty of the hydro-met­al­lur­gi­cal fac­to­ry had sent him a let­ter ask­ing him to inter­vene and engage the judi­cial author­i­ties to unblock the sit­u­a­tion. Did the high-rank­ing offi­cial do so? Was it fol­low­ing this episode that he decid­ed to take a stake in KTMC? We don’t know.

There are still oth­er things that remain in the dark – like the USD 694,000 that KTMC trans­ferred in November 2008 to the account at UBS Geneva from an off­shore com­pa­ny called Clintex Enterprices Inc (BVI). According to our infor­ma­tion, at the time this shell com­pa­ny belonged to close asso­ciates of the Tokayev fam­i­ly. It was involved in the wheat trade, which leaves unclear what links it could have with the min­ing com­pa­ny and why this pay­ment was made in Switzerland.

“It would be good for you to come to Geneva”

In any event, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s secret shares in KTMC swift­ly start­ed to be a source of has­sle. At the end of 2009, the fam­i­ly sought to bring a Chinese com­pa­ny in as a share­hold­er, but the deal fell through. Numerous exchanges appear to indi­cate that from 2011 onwards pres­i­dent Nursultan Nazarbayev per­son­al­ly mon­i­tored the affair. There were many eager poten­tial for­eign investors around the Tokayev fam­i­ly and at one point there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty that the state nuclear com­pa­ny Kazatomprom would pur­chase the shares. Two years lat­er, noth­ing had been resolved. In February 2013, Kassym-Jomart wrote “Muhammed! What’s the sta­tus of the KTMC nego­ti­a­tions? Give me a detailed answer. I still think we need to sell to peo­ple with mon­ey, like the Japanese. I recent­ly spoke to the Boss (Ed. President Nazarbayev’s nick­name). He wants to know where we’re at with the busi­ness and he advised me not to delay the sale. He men­tioned the Germans as poten­tial buy­ers. It would be good for you to come to Geneva to dis­cuss this in per­son.” Muhammed respond­ed: “I’ll be there at the end of the week”.

In the back­ground, the nego­ti­a­tions appear to have been intense. Even the then Prime min­is­ter got involved. In the emails, we under­stand that in spring 2013, Nazarbayev made a deci­sion. Fearing that the Tokayevs’ shares, which were viewed as ‘strate­gic’, would fall into the hands of the Chinese, he des­ig­nat­ed Samruk-Kazyna, the Kazakh sov­er­eign state fund, as the only buyer.

In June 2015, Samruk-Kazyna’s min­ing branch made an announce­ment of a few lines that it had acquired 100% of the shares of the North Katpar com­pa­ny, which owned the license for the epony­mous deposit, for KZT 7.7 bil­lion (Kazakh tenge, equiv­a­lent to USD 41.7 mil­lion at the time). It was a real jack­pot, all the more so because it is only one of the three assets of KTMC. According to an arti­cle in the Kazakh press, this sig­nif­i­cant tung­sten deposit was still unde­vel­oped at that point; it had bare­ly been exploited.

Where these funds went remains a mys­tery. Our long list of ques­tions to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, both about Abi Petroleum and KTMC, has not been answered. His nephew Muhammad Izbastin could not be contacted.

©Getty Images

The family’s Swiss Army knife

As we have seen, the Tokayevs felt at home on the shores of Lake Geneva. They could in par­tic­u­lar count on the loy­al ser­vices of T.U., a com­mer­cial lawyer known in Geneva, who was also direc­tor of a fidu­cia­ry. The emails we were able to con­sult show that the spe­cial­ist in fis­cal arrange­ments, who defend­ed Mossack Fonseca when the scan­dal of the Panama Papers broke, was a man of many tal­ents. He man­aged Timur Tokayev’sexpenditure bud­get, arranged for elec­tri­cians to come and remind­ed him to pay his invoic­es. After help­ing to reg­is­ter the com­pa­ny Edelweiss Resources LLP in London, which seems to have enabled the Tokayevs to take mon­ey out of Kazakhstan under opaque cir­cum­stances (see above), he was asked by Timur to set up a com­pa­ny under the same name in Switzerland. He respond­ed “You are not the first to have this idea. There are many com­pa­nies called EDELWEISS and also an EDELWEISS AG. We can either put EDELWEISS trade mark man­age­ment AG (or some­thing along those lines) or we have to change the name. What do you want to do?” Tokayev junior showed great imag­i­na­tion and sug­gest­ed ‘Edelweiss Foresight Management’. In the Swiss com­pa­ny reg­is­ter we did not find any trace of a com­pa­ny reg­is­tered dur­ing this peri­od named after the del­i­cate alpine flower. This gives the impres­sion that anoth­er solu­tion was cho­sen. In any case, lawyer was also aware of the exis­tence of the small com­pa­ny Abi Petroleum, as evi­denced by an email dat­ed 2008.

T.U. also man­aged real estate assets and rela­tions with banks. In sum­mer 2010, he super­vised Timur’s pur­chase of a duplex pent­house of 307 m² in a lux­u­ry res­i­den­tial com­plex close to Geneva, with a view over the lake. It cost CHF 3.47 mil­lion. For the pur­chase, the lawyer helped his client take out a mort­gage at Wegelin & Co bank at Zurich, where one year pre­vi­ous­ly Timur opened an account on behalf of a Canadian shell com­pa­ny – INVESTISSEMENT L’ARC EN CIEL S.A. –which T.U.’s fidu­cia­ry had set up pre­vi­ous­ly. Wegelin, the old­est pri­vate bank in Switzerland, had been pam­pered by the Tokayevs for a long time. From 2000 to 2007, when her hus­band was Prime min­is­ter and sub­se­quent­ly Minister of for­eign affairs, Nadezhda Tokayeva had an account there. This is evi­denced by a ‘con­fir­ma­tion let­ter’ signed by two man­agers at the estab­lish­ment. Wegelin & Co, which in its life­time wel­comed the for­tunes of many ex-USSR offi­cials, was oblig­ed to close its door in January 2013 after plead­ing guilty to fis­cal fraud in the United States. The Tokayevs then turned to the pri­vate bank Notenstein.

From Tokayev to Kemell – magic tricks with the land registry

Was the Geneva pent­house a place to stay for Tokayev senior, who took up his post as Director General at the United Nations Office at Geneva a few months lat­er? In any case, an email sug­gests that the future pres­i­dent of Kazakhstan stayed there in win­ter 2013.

Identifying the Tokayev family’s real estate assets in Switzerland on the basis of the land reg­is­ter is like a wild goose chase. In the can­ton of Geneva, Timur appears as the own­er of the pent­house, but under anoth­er sur­name – that of Kemell. Without a doubt in hon­our of his pater­nal grand­fa­ther Kemel Tokaev, a writer well known in his coun­try for his adven­ture and crime nov­els. At the end of 2019, numer­ous Kazakh media out­lets had report­ed this change of name.

The land reg­is­ter of the can­ton of Geneva shows Timur as the own­er of the prop­er­ty in Versoix, how­ev­er under a dif­fer­ent fam­i­ly name: Kemell.

The same mag­ic tricks was used for an apart­ment at Grand-Saconnex, in the out­skirts of Geneva, pur­chased a few years ear­li­er. The asset has been held under the name Yeldana Kemell née Chalabayeva since May 2022, as a result of a gift giv­en by Timur to his wife. The ques­tions sent to Timur Tokayev/Kemell were not answered.

The ease with which these prop­er­ties were pur­chased by Timur Tokayev and the opac­i­ty that pre­vails in the land reg­istry once again show the glar­ing loop­holes in the real estate sec­tor in Switzerland. In May 2013, the Federal Police (fed­pol) pub­lished a report con­clud­ing that the mar­ket was “gen­er­al­ly attrac­tive to mon­ey laun­der­ers”. The real estate agents, notaries and lawyers who arrange sales are not yet sub­ject to the fed­er­al Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA).

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which sets the glob­al min­i­mum stan­dards for com­bat­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing, has been call­ing Switzerland to action for numer­ous years, to no avail.

Our polit­i­cal demands

Epilogue: Nepotism and family tapestries at the UN Office at Geneva

Just like all the pow­er­ful of this world, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev want­ed to leave a lega­cy of his pres­ti­gious time in the post of Director General of the United Nations Office in Geneva. He reg­is­tered a char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion with pub­lic util­i­ty sta­tus, with him­self and his son Timur as the Chairs. The Geneva lawyer T.U. direct­ed the ini­tia­tive. After many exchanges were had, prox­ies were sent and tax admin­is­tra­tion was dis­cussed, the Foundation for Innovative Diplomacy was set up in May 2013. Its aim was to “pro­mote diplo­ma­cy, con­sid­ered as a sci­ence and prac­tice of polit­i­cal rela­tions between states to pro­mote peace­ful rela­tions between nations”. In par­al­lel, the fam­i­ly was also work­ing on anoth­er ini­tia­tive that had noth­ing to do with ‘inno­v­a­tive diplo­ma­cy’, but which Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was also proud of – the refur­bish­ment of the XIV con­fer­ence room at the Palais des Nations (the UN head­quar­ters) in Geneva.

As we dis­cov­ered, this ren­o­va­tion was gen­er­ous­ly fund­ed by the Kazakh state for the mod­est sum of USD 842,357 and super­vised from start to fin­ish by Tokayev junior. Timur was in con­tact with an inte­ri­or design­er, who at the time was employed by Mabetex, a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny based in Ticino that main­tains close links to the Kazakh elite. Its name appeared in a momen­tous cor­rup­tion scan­dal in Russia in the mid-1990s. The man­date was to com­plete­ly revive what would become the ‘Kazakh Room’.

In October 2012, the archi­tect signed a con­tract with the Kazakh UN mis­sion and received USD 850,000 in their account at Swiss Migros bank. Of this bud­get, USD 384,117 was des­tined to pay a woman by the name of Batima Zaurbekova to pro­duce and trans­port to Switzerland four large tapes­tries in hon­our of the glo­ry of Kazakhstan. It turns out that Ms Zaurbekova, a mas­ter uphol­ster­er whose work is high­ly regard­ed with­in the Kazakh estab­lish­ment, is no oth­er than Timur Tokayev’s moth­er-in-law, his wife Yeldana’s mother.

©UN Photo / Violaine Martin

During a pri­vate vis­it in Switzerland on 27 June 2015, Tokajev (right), then Chairman of the Senate, and President Nazarbayev (mid­dle) admire the tapes­try of the fam­i­ly in the “Kazakh room”.

Was the eyewatering price of the mural tapestries (USD 384,117 in total or 96,000 each) justified?

According to our infor­ma­tion, in 2008 Ms Zaurbekova had sold iden­ti­cal works for less than USD 2,000 in Kazakhstan, albeit with­out trans­port costs. We were able to doc­u­ment an ini­tial advance from the Migros bank totalling USD 192,000, which was trans­ferred to the mother-in-law’s bank account on 24 December 2012. The rest was due to be paid upon deliv­ery of the tapes­tries in May 2013.

When asked for com­ment, the Kazakh mis­sion to the UN sim­ply con­firmed that the “hand­craft­ed tapes­tries […] of high qual­i­ty” that adorn the ‘Kazakh Room’ were made by Batima Zaurbekova who is a “mem­ber of the Kazakhstan Artists Union since 1974” and who holds the hon­orary title of “Honored Artist of Kazakhstan”. The mis­sion points at the web site of the artist, which was appar­ent­ly cre­at­ed only very recent­ly. Our ques­tions on the fam­i­ly links between Zaurbekova and the Tokayev fam­i­ly were not answered. Batima Zaurbekova could not be con­tact­ed, the mail address on her brand new web­site does not work. When con­tact­ed, the United Nations Office at Geneva explained that “work to ren­o­vate the Kazakh Room was under­tak­en by UNOG, but the project design and all art works were the sole respon­si­bil­i­ty of the donor coun­try and were ful­ly man­aged by the autho­rised offi­cials, after UNOG had ver­i­fied com­pli­ance with UN rules”.

The affair went smooth­ly in any case. Just before say­ing their good­byes at Geneva inter­na­tion­al, in autumn 2013, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev inau­gu­rat­ed the premis­es with great pomp and cer­e­mo­ny. Two years lat­er, while at the head of the Kazakh Senate, he man­aged to get President Nazarbayev to vis­it to admire his fam­i­ly tapes­tries dur­ing a pri­vate trip to Switzerland.

Original sto­ry: PUBLIC EYE

Authors. Agathe Duparc & Robert Bachmann, September 19, 2022