The Kazakh authorities returned 230 billion tenge ($481 million) to the treasury in the investigation of criminal cases related to the family of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev. This is reported by "Informburo" with reference to the interdepartmental commission on countering the illegal concentration of economic resources.
The cases in question were investigated against the closest relatives of Nazarbayev. Thus, the commission believes that the former matchmaker of the ex-president Kairat Boronbaev, the nephew of Kairat Satybaldy, together with his wife Gulmira Satybaldy, as well as the head of the ROP Operator associated with Aliya Nazarbayeva, laundered money, including abroad.
In the case of the ROP Operator, the authorities of Kazakhstan managed to prevent the theft of about 180 billion tenge.
In cases of embezzlement from Kazakhtelecom, the Transport Service Center and several other large organizations, 36 billion tenge were reimbursed. Another $170 million was voluntarily returned from Luxembourg. In the case of Boranbaev, KazMunayGas managed to reimburse 11.3 billion tenge. In the case of unnamed former National Security Committee officials from Hong Kong and the UAE, $3 million was returned.
Satybaldy was arrested in March 2022 on suspicion of embezzlement of funds from Kazakhtelecom on an especially large scale. His wife – in the framework of cases of raiding and embezzlement on an especially large scale. Boranbaev was also arrested in March on suspicion of embezzlement on an especially large scale in the quasi-public sector in mid-March.
Nazarbayev himself controls assets worth billions of dollars through a network of philanthropic foundations. It started about ten years ago. One of the first such funds was the Fund of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan – Elbasy. Initially, it was a public organization, but in 2011 it became "private".