Mukhtar Ablyazov
Mukhtar Qabyluly Ablyazov is a Kazakh opposition leader, businessman and political activist who served as chairman of Bank Turan Alem, and is a co-founder and a leader of the unregistered political party Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan. He was also the former head of the state-owned Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company as well as briefly holding the position of Minister for Energy, Industry, and Trade under Balgimbayev's cabinet before resigning from and joining the opposition against President Nursultan Nazarbayev. In November 2001, he, along with other former Kazakh government officials founded the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan. As result, Ablyazov was imprisoned in March 2002 over accusations of financial fraud and political abuse until being pardoned by Nazarbayev in 2003. After being released from prison, he ceased his formal political activities with the opposition.
Ablyazov has been accused of embezzling $6 billion from BTA Bank while serving as chairman. In 2015, a French court in Lyon issued an extradition order. However, in December 2016, France's highest administrative court, the Conseil d'Etat, canceled the extradition order, on the ground that Russia had a political motive in making the extradition request. Ablyazov was subsequently released from the Fleury-Mérogis Prison and was believed to reside in Paris. The UK High Court of Justice has twice issued arrest warrants on Ablyazov; most recently on 25 July 2019, and extended to 22 months a court-ordered detention originating in 2012 for a contempt of court judgement. In September 2020, Ablyazov obtained the status of political refugee in France.
On December 9, 2022, CNDA finally deprived Ablyazov of political asylum in France. In July 2023, Ablyazov posted on his Facebook that he was ordered to leave French territory within 30 days.
Early life and education
Ablyazov was born in the village of Vannovka in the South Kazakhstan Region, at the time when Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union. His father, Qabyl Ablyazov,, worked as an engineer and was a teacher at a technical school. His mother, Rauza Tolebergnova,, was a librarian. As a kid, he loved reading books and playing chess. Ablyazov was taught at a Russian-speaking school, the Lomonosov Regional School, in his hometown. He also partly worked as a loader in a rural farm at night.At the age of 17, Ablyazov wanted to become a theoretician and a professor. He attended the Alma-Ata State University where he then later transferred to Moscow Engineering Physics Institute during his sophomore year. There, Ablyazov graduated in 1986 and earned a degree in theoretical physics. After graduating, he worked as a junior researcher at the Kazakh National University.
In 1987, Ablyazov married Alma Shalabayeva.
In 1990, Ablyazov was enrolled in postgraduate studies in the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute. For that reason, he was fired from his role as a junior researcher at the Kazakh National University.
Career
Ablyazov started working during the fall of the Soviet Union and the start of Kazakhstan's Independence. His first job was the buying and selling of computers and copying machines. In 1991, Ablyazov registered his first company and named it "Madina," which is the name of his first daughter.In 1992, Ablyazov started his business by supplying all the regions of Kazakhstan with products such as salt, sugar, flower, matches, tea, chocolate, medicine, photocopiers, fax machines and computers. In order to run this business, Ablyazov established Astana Holding in Kazakhstan, a multi-sector private holding company, which established and consisted of: Astana-Sugar, Astana-Food, Aral-Salt, The Shymkent Pasta Factory, Astana-Medical Service, Astana-Motors, Astana-Interotel, Astana-Bank, Trade House Zhanna.
In 1997, Ablyazov was appointed as head of the state-owned Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company. KEGOC was a company close to bankruptcy at the time of his appointment as its head. In one year, he managed to make the state-owned company profitable. By 1998, he had a net wealth of about $300 million, one of the richest people in Kazakhstan.
BTA Bank
In 1998, Ablyazov was a leading member of consortium of Kazakh investors that acquired Bank Turan Alem in a privatization auction for $72 million. He later paid back the loan. The bank later came to be known as BTA Bank. Ablyazov served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of BTA Bank from 2005 to 2009. BTA Bank increased its loan book 1,100 percent between 2003 and 2007 and held a loans to deposits ratio of 3.6 to 1 in 2007.In 2008, BTA Bank was the largest commercial financial institution in Kazakhstan, with internal reserves allowing for cooperation with foreign and domestic owners of the shares. At the same time, BTA Bank was the largest creditor of the Kazakh economy – the bank owned about 30% of all the loans granted to legal entities. Shortly thereafter, Kazakhstan's sovereign wealth fund, Samruk-Kazyna, injected significant funds into BTA in an effort to keep the bank solvent, effectively becoming its majority shareholder.
It has been argued that BTA Bank “threatened to dominate the other Kazakh banks – banks that Nazarbayev controlled” and that the bank's forced nationalization in 2009 was part of an effort by Nazarbayev “to dispose of Ablyazov.”
Bankruptcy
Global accounting firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers auditors discovered a $10 billion shortfall on the bank's books that led to the bank's bankruptcy and discovery of largest financial fraud attributed to Ablyazov in JSC BTA Bank v Ablyazov.In 2010 a US bankruptcy judge granted BTA Bank Chapter 15 protection while it worked to restructure $11.6 billion owed to foreign creditors, much of it to western banks, as a result of loans made while Ablyazov was chairman.
In September 2009, Kazakhstan's sovereign wealth fund, Samruk-Kazyna, injected significant funds into BTA in an effort to keep the bank solvent, effectively becoming its majority shareholder. Shortly before Samruk-Kazyna's intervention Ablyazov fled Kazakhstan to London.
Political career
Ablyazov's first interests in politics was in 1987 when he engaged in social activities and founded a political club, believing that the Soviet Union wasn't being developed properly at the Kazakh National University where he was a junior researcher. The club attracted young people, political scientists, and philosophers. There, after leading a discussion, Ablyazov was accused of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda and was, along with his peers, detained the following day by the KGB although Ablyazov suffered no consequences due to the fact that Gorbachev's Perestroika reforms in allowing greater political freedom was already beginning to take shape at that time.In 1998, as head of KEGOC, Ablyazov was named Minister for Energy, Industry, and Trade.
Ablyazov has been described by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as “part of a younger generation” that Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, “hoped to harness as he pushed his resource-rich nation into the 21st century.” Yet after a few years, “Ablyazov and the others had broken ranks, citing disenchantment with endemic corruption in Nazarbayev's inner circle.”
In November 2001, Ablyazov and other colleagues, including fellow disenchanted proteges of Nazarbyaev, co-founded the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, an opposition political movement that challenged the Nazarbayev regime. The QDT included a combination of existing politicians and major businessmen and called for the decentralization of political power, a strong legislature, and an independent judiciary to balance the power concentrated in the executive branch. This opposition initiative, according to RFE/RL, “quickly drew the wrath of the regime.”
In July 2002, as one of the main leaders of the QDT, Ablyazov was convicted of “abusing official powers as a minister” and sentenced to six years in prison. Also sent to prison were his fellow would-be reformers and former Nazarbayev proteges Galymzhan Zhakiyanov and Altynbek Sarsenbauyly.
In response to pressure from the international community, including Amnesty International and the European Parliament, he was released in May 2003 after only serving ten months, on the condition that he renounce politics.
Ablyazov moved to Moscow in 2003 to rebuild his business ties and in 2005 became the Chairman of the Board of Directors of BTA Bank.
After his release from prison, Ablyazov reportedly spent “millions of dollars funding opposition groups and independent media.” RFE/RL has quoted Yevgeny Zhovtis, head of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, as saying that “Nazarbayev to a certain extent felt betrayed” by Ablyazov and the others, given that “he thinks that he provided them the space to become wealthy, to become well-known, to make a career in state service or in business, and they challenged him. When he pardoned Ablyazov in May 2003 and allowed him to return to business in exchange for a promise not to be involved in politics and then found out that he was again involved in politics, of course Nazarbayev felt betrayed twice.”
While living in Russia and Kazakhstan, Ablyazov was the target of assassination attempts and an effort was made to kidnap his son from school.
Exile in United Kingdom
Following the issuing of the Kazakh warrant, Ablyazov left Kazakhstan for London. This made him, according to RFE/RL, one of “dozens of former high-ranking Kazakh officials who have fled abroad after falling out of favor.”Ablyazov is described to have lived sumptuously in London. However, a High Court judge held Ablyazov in contempt and imposed three prison sentences for failing to disclose assets including a nine-bedroom mansion in London's "Billionaire's Row" and a 100-acre estate in Windsor Great Park. He rented a 15,000 square foot mansion on Bishop's Avenue in London.
During his time in London, Ablyazov told The Standard that he was an “innocent...victim of persecution” by Nazarbaev and was “in fear of his life from his country's secret police, the KNB.”
Claiming to be innocent of all charges, he “employed tight security to protect him from murder attempts” while living in London. Once, while he was being driven in London, a car “rammed his vehicle repeatedly.”
While in Britain, Ablyazov maintained close ties to opposition media in Kazakhstan. RFE/RL has noted that in 2011, the broadcaster K+ and the newspapers Vzglyad and Golos Respubliki, along with other private Kazakh media with ties to Ablyazov, “gave full-scale coverage to the bloody police crackdown on striking oil workers in the western city of Zhanaozen.” Not long after, Kazakh courts ordered these media outlets closed, along with the opposition Alga party, headed by Vladimir Kozlov, an Ablyazov ally, who was sentenced to a long prison term. The Nazarbaev government reportedly considered Ablyazov to be implicated in these media outlets' critical coverage.
Also during his time in Britain, Ablyazov was the main source of funding for Aksara, an independent theater company whose productions challenge the Nazarbaev government and seek to provide an alternative to the state-subsidized theater, which takes a pro-government stance.
In 2012, a British judge ordered Ablyazov imprisoned for purportedly lying in court about his financial assets. Shortly thereafter, Ablyazov left Britain. It was charged that he exited the country in order to avoid imprisonment. His lawyers, however, said that he left because he had received a death threat. The lawyers further maintained that Ablyazov “did not embezzle the $6 billion claimed by the Kazakh government, but restructured the bank's holdings in order to protect them from precisely the kind of government takeover that took place in 2009.”
Since his departure from Britain, it has been unclear where Ablyazov is living, although he was widely believed to have gone to France.