In Kazakhstan in early January 2022, 227 people were tragically killed when popular demonstrations over gas prices turned into violent riots. Over a year later a former prime minister of Kazakhstan, Karim Massimov, was jailed for treason for his apparent role in the unrest. His imprisonment marked an incredible fall from grace for one of Kazakhstan’s most important political figures, one who had spent over eight years as the country’s prime minister.
Many of those who were protesting in January 2022 were rallying against Nazarbayev’s legacy of corruption and kleptocracy – where a country’s leaders siphon off the country’s wealth for personal gain and to maintain power. ‘Napoleon Complex’ examines that legacy by taking a deep dive into the corruption of Massimov, who maintained the kleptocratic system under Nazarbayev while reaping the personal benefits for him and his family. The report analyses never-before-seen documents in order to understand how Kazakhstan’s kleptocracy worked in practice.
Key findings:
- While deputy prime minister, Massimov was a beneficial owner of Kazakhstan’s main telecoms provider, Kazakhtelecom JSC, circa 2006, and received $25 million in a potentially fraudulent and highly suspicious share transfer in 2006 that appears to have been a bribe for him.
- Massimov continued to benefit from Kazakhtelecom and other telecoms companies using a proxy, Aigul Nuriyeva, a Kazakh businesswoman now resident in the United Kingdom with her six children. Nuriyeva – who now uses her married name Aigul Ikhsan – was instrumental in arranging the suspicious $25 million payment via Kazakhtelecom.
- In 2010, Massimov planned to receive a bribe of €12 million in relation to a deal struck between Airbus and Kazakhstan regarding the latter’s purchase of satellite equipment and helicopters.
- According to allegations made by a former insider, Massimov used a Kazakh bank, Eximbank, to launder over $100 million disguised as fictitious loans issued to various front corporations.
- Massimov used his corruptly obtained wealth to purchase dozens of luxury items, including several letters written by Napoleon Bonaparte worth €97,500. Massimov used staff in Kazakhstan’s Embassy in Paris to source these letters and subsequently smuggle them out of France to Kazakhstan via diplomatic mail and other methods.
- Massimov lived a life of luxury, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on family trips to Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore, including making around $500,000 of flight bookings for these and other personal trips. He also received $313,000 worth of medical treatment from American doctors who were flown to Kazakhstan, and donated $200,000 to a private school in Washington D.C. in which his youngest daughter was enrolling.
The transfer of illicit capital from kleptocracies such as Kazakhstan into the West deprives their citizens of much-needed revenue, but it also has an effect on the recipient countries in the West – witness, for example, the effect that ‘Londongrad’ and the billions of dollars of Russian oligarchic money has had on the United Kingdom in the last two decades. Since Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine, the UK government has sanctioned dozens of Kremlin-linked businessmen and oligarchs, yet despite Kazakhstan’s kleptocracy and the tragic events of January 2022, not a single individual from Kazakhstan has been sanctioned either in the UK or the US.
This blind spot risks undermining the rationale for creating the Global Anti-Corruption sanctions legislation, and allows those who have looted Kazakhstan to escape with impunity. The report also looks at the importance of networks in kleptocracies, with an examination of how Massimov forged ties with everyone from Hunter Biden to Tony Blair. Ultimately, the report is a call for action against the growing tide of dirty money from kleptocracies that is seeping into our institutional systems and concludes that in order to counteract kleptocracy we not only must investigate, sanction and prosecute the kleptocrats themselves, but also scrutinize the enablers who facilitate these deals.
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SPEAKER BIOS
Thomas Mayne is a Director at Freedom for Eurasia. His research focuses on anti-money laundering legislation, especially in regard to grand corruption and kleptocracy. He is also a Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, and a former Visiting Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House. For twelve years he worked as a Senior Campaigner for Global Witness, an anti-corruption NGO that works to end the exploitation of natural resources, and was responsible for investigations in Eurasia.
Leila Nazgul Seiitbek, is an exiled lawyer, anti-corruption and human rights advocate from the Kyrgyz Republic, who was granted asylum in Austria in 2021. She is a Chairwoman of Freedom for Eurasia, which documents and reports on human rights and corruption abuses in Eurasia (the former Soviet Republics of Eastern Europe and Central Asia).
David Szakonyi is Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, co-Director of PONARS Eurasia, and co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective. His academic research focuses on corruption, clientelism, and political economy in Russia, Western Europe and the United States. His most recent book–Politics for Profit:Business, Elections, and Policymaking in Russia (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, 2020)–examines why businesspeople run for political office and how their firms benefit. He has also led numerous investigations into political corruption and opacity in the private equity and real estate industries published in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, the Daily Beast, and the Miami Herald, among other outlets. He received his PhD in political science from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Virginia.
SEE STORY PUBLISHED BY THE TELEGRAPH ON OUR REPORT
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/05/02/blair-pictured-kazakh-dictators-right-hand-man/
DOWNLOAD THE BLAIR/MASSIMOV PHOTO
See the summary of the report in Russian on Elmedia.
