Yelge Qaitaru Foundation: the former president of Kazakhstan and the former head of the country's Security Council, Nursultan Nazarbayev should be investigated

The Internet con­tains some pub­lished mate­r­i­al on the results of a joint inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the Organized Crime and Corruption Research Center (OCCRP), the Kazakhstani edi­tion of Vlast.kz and the Kyrgyz edi­tion of Kloop.kg.

It fol­lows from the above-men­tioned mate­r­i­al that the for­mer pres­i­dent of Kazakhstan and the for­mer head of the coun­try’s Security Council, Nursultan Nazarbayev, owns banks, hotels, TV chan­nels and oth­er assets worth bil­lions of dol­lars through a net­work of char­i­ta­ble foundations.

The inves­ti­ga­tion alleges that Nazarbayev, while still being the President of Kazakhstan, cre­at­ed four pri­vate char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tions with sim­i­lar names and opaque report­ing. Nursultan Nazarbayev con­tin­ues to man­age them behind the scenes to this day. Formally, the foun­da­tions are engaged in char­i­ty — they pop­u­lar­ize the Kazakh lan­guage and send gifts to chil­dren, but in addi­tion to this, they man­age large assets that actu­al­ly belong to Nursultan Nazarbayev.

These assets include banks, TV sta­tions, hotels, a pri­vate jet worth over $100 mil­lion, a golf course, hotels, and bil­lions of dol­lars in cash. “Among the less remark­able objects are ware­hous­es, a pas­ta fac­to­ry etc.. For a while, even a land­scap­ing com­pa­ny was on this list, ” the authors of the inves­ti­ga­tion note.

As the jour­nal­ists found out, the Nazarbayev Foundation, offi­cial­ly engaged in sup­port­ing edu­ca­tion, owns a con­trol­ling stake in a com­pa­ny named Jusan Technologies, which, in turn, owns online stores in Kazakhstan and Russia, mobile oper­a­tors such as Kcell and Jusan Mobile, food dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies, shop­ping cen­ters in Nur-Sultan and Kostanay and bro­ker­age com­pa­nies. The com­pa­ny’s assets are esti­mat­ed at $7.8 billion.

The Airbus ACJ320Neo pri­vate jet, referred to as the “fly­ing pent­house”, has been pur­chased by anoth­er fund cre­at­ed by the for­mer pres­i­dent, the Nursultan Nazarbayev Foundation. Currently, the air­craft is in the fleet of “Berkut Air” the state air­line of Kazakhstan, which is sub­or­di­nate to the Presidential Administration.

We ask you to check the accu­ra­cy of the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed, the legal­i­ty of the for­ma­tion of the funds and their assets, as well as the sources of finan­cial funds received by the foun­da­tions for the cor­rup­tion com­po­nent and inform us about the results of the check.

Your response will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the pub­lic and mass media.

Best rea­grds,

Bulat Abilov

Urazaly Yerzhanov

From:

Mr. Abilov B.M.

Mr. Yerzhanov U.S.

Yelge Qaitaru Foundation, 42V Ivanilov street, Almaty, Kazakhstan

To:

Mr. Asylov B.N, Prosecutor General of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Mr. Akhmetzhanov M.M., Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Mr. Bektenov O.A., Chairman of the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on com­bat­ing corruption

Mr. Elimanov Zh.K, Chairman of the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on finan­cial monitoring

July 27,2022

Original link to claims on the web­site:

Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan