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Kazakhstan’s Enemy Number One: Rahkat Aliyev

Vienna was an epicenter of the Cold War, a front-line city awash in spies, traitors, secret police and defectors from behind the Iron Curtain. Eighteen years after the collapse of the USSR, Vienna is once again at the forefront of an East-West struggle, as Kazakhstan’s “enemy number one,” Rahkat Aliyev, formerly Kazakhstan’s ambassador to Austria and the OSCE, resides there. In May 2007, following the disappearance of two prominent Nurbank executives, an institution controlled by Aliyev and an investigation which implicated him in their kidnapping, Kazakh President Nursultan NAzarbayev stripped Aliyev of his government posts and the Kazakh government had Aliyev arrested in Vienna under an Interpol warrant. Austria however denied Kazakhstan’s request for his extradition, citing the lack of an appropriate treaty between the two nations, as well as concerns that Aliyev would not receive a fair trial back home.

 

From his Viennese eyrie Aliyev has since mounted a relentless public relations campaign, portraying himself as the innocent anti-corruption crusader beset by his political enemies at the behest of his former father-in-law, President Nazarbayev. Four months ago Aliyev published The Godfather-in-Law, a lurid purported “tell all” volume about Nazarbayev and his administration, complete with documentation. The most prominent of Kazakh politicians in exile, former Prime Minister Akhezhan Kazhegeldin, himself no fan of Nazarbayev’s government, recently described the volume during an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Kazakh-language service, Radio Azzatyk, as containing “truth, half-truths and lies,” applying the last term to Aliyev’s descriptions of himself and his activities.

 

The work has received a decidedly muted reception in the West, despite appearing in German, Russian and more recently, English. While Aliyev boasts of the book’s documentation, many of its more sensationalist charges remain innuendo – reproduced bank drafts purportedly destined for Nazarbayev’s offshore accounts are in fact made out simply to “bearer,” not Nazarbayev himself, while claims of conversations about Nazarbayev’s personal wealth or his purported involvement in the 2006 murder of opposition politician Altynbek Sarsenbayev are unsupported by tape recordings or transcripts, despite the fact that Aliyev has repeatedly posted other such materials on his LiveJournal blog. In the end, the reader faced with such an uneven work is left to himself to decide what to believe. The Godfather-in-Law is Aliyev’s first attempt at writing political science, as his sole previous journalistic effort is a 2002 book co-authored with T.A. Akpaev, The Russian-Kazakh-English dictionary of sporting terminology. Football.

 

For Western audiences and governments the fundamental question about Aliyev is whether his self-portrayal is accurate or, in Kazhegeldin’s words, “lies.”  His background and career path strongly indicate that the truth is far closer to Kazhegeldin’s tart observations than Aliyev’s self-serving and sophisticated public relations campaign. While both Aliyev and Astana have vested interests in the struggle for Alieyv’s image, a recounting of Aliyev’s career and actions can only raise serious questions in the reader’s mind.

 

Rakhat Mukhtarovich Aliev was born on 10 December 1962 to a prominent Kazakh surgeon, Muhtar Mukhtarovich Aliyev, who would eventually serve as the Kazakh SSR’s Minister of Health from 1982 to 1987. As a member of the privileged Soviet “golden youth,” Aliyev’s career should he wish to follow in his father’s footsteps was pre-ordained, graduating in 1986 from Almaty State Medical Institute and subsequently pursuing postgraduate studies at 2nd Moscow Medical Institut.e

 

What would most strongly mark Alieyv’s future career was not his medical studies however, but his marriage in 1983 to Dariga Nursultanova Nazarbaeya, whose father at the time was Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR. Nazarbayev’s and Aliyev’s fates would be subsequently inextricably intertwined, until Nazarbayev could no longer overlook his behavior.

 

At the time of the collapse of the USSR Aliyev was working as a medical researcher in the Kazakh Research Institute of Surgery. In 1993 Nazarbayev appointed Aliyev Deputy Chief of the Office of Foreign Economic Relations, Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan  and as General Manager of Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations KazMedImport  joint venture foreign trading company, responsible for importing medicines and equipment into Kazakhstan, where he worked until 1995.

 

Managing KazMedImport gave Aliyev both managerial skills and a vision of the money to be made in the world of business, so he abandoned his government work and founded the Trade and Finance Ltd.” as well as establishing his own food company, the Sugar Center. As company president, using intimidation and family connections, Aliyev crushed his competitors, eventually establishing a monopoly estimated at 80% of Kazakhstan’s sugar market, estimated at $300-400 million annually. Aliyev acquired other food industries, including distilleries, using illegal raiding techniques more suited to The Godfather movie than Kazakhstan’s growing capitalist markets.

 

Beginning in December 1996, Aliyev was handed a priceless government position from which to enrich himself – a succession of jobs in the Ministry of Finance’s Main Tax Police Division, eventually rising to Chairman of the Tax Police Committee. Over the next two years he used the power of his office to intimidate his business rivals into selling him their businesses at bargain prices; otherwise, they would be subjected to the full range of governmental fiscal pressures, including audits.

 

The final government job allowing Aliyev to continue his raiding activities was when in September 1999 he became Almaty and Almaty district head of Department of the Committee on National Security, rising in May 2001 to become First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on National Security. Aliyev was now in an unassailable position with the power he could bring on competitors, from the tax police to now the secret police.

 

Such a situation could not last; in early October 2001, while Aliyev was visiting the U.S.,

Mazhilis member Tolen Toktasynov directly criticized Alieyv’s behavior in an open letter to Nazarbayev, to be followed by an open letter from business magnates supporting Toktasynov’s charges. In early 2002 Nazarbayev exiled Aliyev to a diplomatic posting in Vienna.

 

Aliyev continued to build up his business empire, which eventually included the companies mentioned earlier along with nightclubs, casinos and a media empire which included the “Khabar” news agency and “Alma-Media” grouping, along with the TV channels “Kazakhstan-1”, NTK and ORT- Kazakhstan, radio stations “Europa-Plus-Kazakhstan,” “Hit-FM-Khabar,” “Retro-Karavan,” “Russian Radio,” newspaper “New Generation”.

 

The final rupture occurred in May 2007 over Aliyev’s purported role in the kidnapping and murder of two Nurbank officials, an fiscal institution where Aliyev had a controlling share. Aliyev asserts that it occurred because he announced his intention to run for the presidency in 2012, but civil and military trials in early 2008 found him and a number of his associate guilty, with Aliyev receiving sentences totaling 40 years along with the confiscation of his property.

 

Aliyev now asserts that he supported democratic values all along, even though his previous actions indicate otherwise. Similarly, his declarations that he has “many, many supporters” in Kazakhstan is suspect, given the fact that he has never held elected position, but instead used the positions he was appointed to through his family connections to enrich himself. Aliyev’s efforts to reach out to the legitimate Kazakh opposition in exile have been rebuffed and last month one of his closest cronies, former KNB chief Alnur Musayev broke with him, and claimed that Aliyev was involved in the Nurbank executives’ disappearance, as well as kidnapping attempts in Vienna.

 

While the Nazarbayev administration has made its fair share of mistakes, it can point with pride to many accomplishments, not least of which is the improvement of living standards and a lessening of the country’s poverty rate, as shown by data from international agencies such as the United Nations, World Bank and international Monetary Fund. Aliyev’s public relations campaign notwithstanding, his legacy largely seems to be one of betrayal of his family and country in pursuit of enriching himself. In February 2007 Aliyev casually mentioned during an interview with Reuters that he owned 10% of the French international sugar trading company Sucden and stated that “it would be difficult to spend all the money I have,” raising the question of how he acquired such wealth. To an objective observer, these seem less the words of a patriot than a selfish individual obsessed with acquiring a business empire, by fair means or foul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

N. Schulze

Night Life of Almaty City, Kazakhstan Ночная жизнь Алматы, Казахстан