Will Ukraine return the billions stolen by Ablyazov? Wolf Mukhtar Ablyazov in sheep's clothing Who is Ablyazov

Mukhtar Kabulovich Ablyazov(born May 16) - a major Kazakh and Russian entrepreneur, former Minister of Energy, Industry and Trade of Kazakhstan (April 1998 - October 1999).

Biography

Born on May 16 in the village of Galkino, Lengersky district, South Kazakhstan region.

In 1986 he graduated with a degree in theoretical physicist. After graduating from the institute, he worked as an engineer, junior researcher, engineer at the Kazakh State University (KazGU).

In 1990, he entered the MEPhI graduate school. For admission to graduate school in Moscow, he was fired from his current job in Almaty. Necessity forced him to go into business.

From 1993 to 1993 he was the director of the MP "Madina" (named after his only daughter at that time).

From 1993 to 1997, he was the founder, owner and president of the Kazakh holding company Astana-Holding. Mukhtar Ablyazov started working during the period of independence of Kazakhstan, the economic crisis, the depreciation of money (rubles on passbooks), endless lines, a terrible shortage of food and consumer goods.

First of all, he was engaged in essential products and supplies to all regions of Kazakhstan of sugar, matches, salt, flour, pasta, tea, chocolate, furniture, medicines, that is, almost all food and consumer goods. His companies took part in saturating the Kazakh market with food products and covered the shortage of consumer goods in Kazakhstan. Accordingly, the commercial enterprises Astana-Sugar, Astana-Food, Araltuz, Chimkent Pasta Factory, Match Plant, Astana-Med-Service, Astana-Interotel, Astana-Bank ”,“ Zhanna Trading House ”,“ Astana-Motors ”and many other areas. All these enterprises were included in the holding company "Astana-Holding".

From June 1997, Ablyazov was the president of KEGOS OJSC, and from April 1998 to October 1999 he was the Minister of Energy, Industry and Trade of Kazakhstan in the government of Nurlan Balgimbaev. In October 1999, he resigned, and since that time he has been under investigation in the case of embezzlement of funds, concealment of income, creation of a criminal group and abuse of power.

Mukhtar Ablyazov is accused of embezzlement of financial assets of BTA Bank between 2005 and 2009. The total damage is estimated at least $6 billion. Ablyazov was detained in France in July 2013. In January 2014, a French lower court called for the extradition of the banker, but in April this decision was overturned by the Court of Cassation. The case was reviewed by the Court of Appeal of Lyon, which at the end of October also recommended that the extradition request for the banker be granted, giving priority to the Russian side. On December 9, 2016, the State Council of France rejected the decision to extradite Mukhtar Ablyazov to Russia. It should be noted that Ablyazov is being prosecuted in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, but extradition requests are submitted from Russia and Ukraine, since Kazakhstan does not have a corresponding agreement with France

In 1998, the state put up for tender the shares of Bank Turan Alem, the Astana-Holding company offered the state the most - $ 72 million. But Ablyazov did not have such an amount. A week after the tender, a loan agreement was concluded, according to which $9.8 million from the state-owned bank at that time was placed at the disposal of a private one. So the state-owned stake in the bank was purchased with state money.

In October 1999, he was under investigation in the case of embezzlement of funds, concealment of income. Ablyazov was accused of developing and implementing a scheme in 1998-1999, according to which the resources of KEGOC and Ekibastuz GRES-2 JSC were used in the interests of private enterprises. In particular, under an agreement between KEGOC JSC, Ekibastuz GRES-2 and the Kustanaiasbest enterprise, large debts of the latter for electricity were transferred to GRES-2. As a result, KEGOC's losses in 1998 and the first quarter of 1999 exceeded $20 million.

In May 2002, the court sentenced Ablyazov to 6 years in a penal colony of general regime and compensation for damages, and also deprived him of the right to hold leadership positions in the civil service for two years.

On April 8, 2003, Ablyazov filed a petition with the pardon commission, and already in May, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a decree pardoning him.

On December 19, 2004, Yerzhan Tatishev, chairman of the board of Bank Turan Alem, died while hunting. In 2017, Muratkhan Tokmadi, in whose hands a gun shot, admitted on the air of the KTK TV channel, and then in court, that he was fulfilling Ablyazov’s order.

Mukhtar Ablyazov was accused of embezzling funds from BTA Bank between 2005 and 2009. The total damage was estimated at $6 billion.

On July 31, 2013, he was arrested by Interpol in the village of Mouans-Sartoux in France. In January 2014, a French lower court called for the extradition of the banker, but in April this decision was overturned by a court of cassation. The case was reviewed in the Lyon Court of Appeal, which at the end of October also recommended that the request for extradition of the banker be granted, giving priority to the Russian side.

On December 9, 2016, the French State Council rejected the decision to extradite Mukhtar Ablyazov to Russia, recognizing the actions of Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine as political persecution. Ablyazov has been prosecuted in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, but extradition requests have been filed only from Russia and Ukraine, as Kazakhstan does not have a relevant agreement with France.

In June 2017, the specialized inter-district criminal court of Alma-Ata found Ablyazov guilty and sentenced him in absentia to 20 years in prison, confiscation of property, a fine and deprivation of the right to engage in professional activities in banks for 3 years.

According to the materials of the case, the financial scheme created by Ablyazov worked for four years: the bank issued bad loans - from several million to several billion tenge, the amounts were transferred to the accounts of front companies owned by the oligarch himself. With the money received, he and his entourage bought up luxury real estate in Europe and the United States, as well as industrial enterprises in Africa. According to the materials of the court, in total, Ablyazov withdrew more than $7.5 billion from Kazakhstan.

In November 2017, the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) published a report that included the name of Mukhtar Ablyazov, ex-chairman of the board of BTA Bank. According to the investigation, Ablyazov withdrew funds to the accounts of offshore companies, including CFJ Star Trust, founded by his brother-in-law Syrym Shalabaev. Two years after Ablyazov's emigration from Kazakhstan, the front company in the Cayman Islands ceased operations, and was soon closed altogether.

In March 2018, the Esilsky Court in Astana recognized the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, led by Ablyazov, as an extremist organization, banning its activities in the country.

Since September 2007, daughter Madina has been married to the adopted son of the former mayor of Alma-Ata, Viktor Khrapunov, who lives in Switzerland, Ilyas. A criminal case was initiated against Viktor Khrapunov in 2011, and in February 2012 he was put on the interstate wanted list.

Son Madiyar Ablyazov obtained a residence permit in the UK in 2013 by applying for an investor visa, for which his father transferred more than £1 million to a Swiss bank in his name.

In the first weeks of December, several scandalous media outlets, both European and Russian, published "sensational revelations" regarding a number of major officials and businessmen from Kazakhstan. On the same days, more serious mass media, such as the French newspaper Liberation or radio RFI, published an interview with Mukhtar Ablyazov, a banker who turns gray schemes, who unexpectedly received his freedom after three years of "serving time" in a French prison. If you look closely at the details of publications, then the connection between these two information trends becomes obvious. And this means that Ablyazov has embarked on the path of a PR war - one of the most popular amusements among the disgraced oligarchs.

Former Minister of Energy, Industry and Trade of Kazakhstan, former owner of BTA Bank Mukhtar Ablyazov is on the international wanted list at the request of the authorities of three countries at once - Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. The ex-banker is accused of embezzlement, according to various sources, from 6 to 7.5 billion dollars from the accounts of his bank, which was bought out by the state in 2009.

In 2013 Ablyazov was arrested by the French police in their own chic Villa on the Cote d'Azur and placed in custody. All subsequent years, the French courts of various instances decided on the issue of his extradition, while already at the very beginning of the process, the Court of Appeal of Lyon gave priority to the request from Russia, recommending that Ablyazov be extradited to the law enforcement agencies of our country.

Apparently, this moment helped the international swindler to ultimately avoid extradition. As you know, at the beginning of 2014 there was a “Maidan”, followed by the Crimea and Donbass, after which Russia’s relations with the Western world began to deteriorate rapidly. In addition to direct sanctions, politics gradually began to penetrate into all spheres of international contacts - sports, culture, science, humanitarian projects. Any action (or inaction), one way or another capable of serving the interests of Russia, has become virtually forbidden for every European official. Obviously, this unspoken ban also penetrated the heads of representatives of the State Council of France, which on December 9, 2016 rejected the court order to extradite Mukhtar Ablyazov to Russia.

The fact that Ablyazov decided to copy the experience of the unforgettable BAB became clear from his very first statements when he was released. In interviews released after Dec. 9, the Kazakh oligarch says he generously sponsored"tulip revolution" that took place in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. Whether this is true or an outright bluff remains unclear, and, by and large, it doesn’t really matter: it’s a long-standing thing, Ablyazov’s statements cannot have any impact on the modern policy of the named country. Another thing is important: the ex-banker, declared a criminal in three countries, now plays in the European arena in a fundamentally different role. He is already, you see, a dissident martyr persecuted by the authorities totalitarian Kazakhstan, which means that he may well count on political asylum and citizenship, say, of the same France. Ablyazov himself does not forget to mention this circumstance in his interviews. “I am not yet a resident of France, but we are doing this now,” he says, for example, to an RFI radio correspondent.

The second lesson of the “Berezovsky school”, which Ablyazov learned well, was, apparently, black PR.

To begin with, a “canard” was thrown into the media that the authorities of Kazakhstan allegedly blocked access to Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other global Internet services so that the inhabitants of the country could not watch or read Ablyazov’s interview. Some editors, without thinking, even published this scandalous news. Apparently, not everyone is given the opportunity to realize that the complete blocking of such resources on the territory of an entire country is a gigantic technological task that cannot be solved at once. There is only one country in the world that has built its own state firewall - China ( North Korea we do not take into account, there is no filtering - the exits to the global network are simply closed). And it took years to build this "Chinese wall"...

Following this, on some websites, the style of which can be described by a single refrain "scandals, rumors, intrigues" and the price tags of which for the publication of such "sensations" are almost openly presented on the Internet, articles of a certain kind began to appear. The objects of “revelations” were some Kazakh officials and entrepreneurs, one way or another connected with the Ablyazov case, his past assets, and, in fact, they saved everything that the fugitive banker could not take abroad.

The subject of "sensations" is typical for "black PR": facts of corruption, confirmed by some obviously "photoshopped" documents and evidence from anonymous "trustworthy sources"; searching for skeletons in the closets of all relatives up to the fifth generation; Well, of course, "strawberry" - how without it? Using the services of priestesses of love, non-traditional preferences, molestation of minors, etc., etc. - but better all together and at once! Surprisingly, having re-read terabytes of such dirt in the nineties and zero, having reviewed thousands of videos of the same content on NTV, Ren-TV and other "impartial" TV channels, people still have not had enough. Still "people hawala", as Bogdan Titomir said. And the oligarchs regularly feed.

The well-known Russian journalist and blogger Oleg Lurie told how this is technically carried out. He was approached by a certain person who identified himself as Mikhail and said that he could hand over some “sensational documents” compromising the current chairman of the board of directors of BTA-Bank Kenes Rakisheva. For the service of publishing these documents on the journalist's blog, the petitioner was not sorry - 15 thousand dollars.

Lurie, as he says, out of curiosity, decided to look at copies of these documents, and asked to send at least a part for preliminary review. It turned out that the unknown PR man calls screenshots of letters from Rakishev's allegedly hacked email box "documents" - fragments of correspondence with well-known representatives of Russian show business.

Looking at these screenshots, the journalist, who had previously been offered to earn extra money on such publications, instantly recognized the fake. Apparently, the "documents" were created in a hurry, by an unknown "master of Photoshop", who made a bunch of typical mistakes. For example, on one of the "printouts" the domain of the recipient's address is written like this: "yahoo.co..uk" - an extra dot is inserted. It is clear that the mail server would simply not be able to deliver a letter with such an error in the address! And the story with another domain, the personal page of which belongs to an allegedly famous fashion model, is completely comical: the Whois service (the global database of Internet address owners) defines this domain as ... free. That is, I'm not busy with anyone, take it - I don't want it. The issue price is $9.88.

Of course, Lurie did not get involved with such "documents" - reputation is more expensive. But, apparently, there were also less squeamish journalists, since copies of those very fakes soon began to appear on yellow sites. One way or another, the avalanche of "black PR" has apparently already been launched by Ablyazov, and, remembering the experience of his probable inspirer, Boris Berezovsky, one can assume that such "stuffing" will be repeated in the near future. The only question is money - how many publications will the former oligarch have enough of?

However, they contain the answer - why does Ablyazov need this, what does he want to achieve with such information attacks? Despite 3 years of austerity in prison, the fugitive banker now has practically no cash. It seems that all his accounts in all countries are frozen as the assets of an internationally wanted criminal. And his first task now is to unfreeze these accounts. Well, and then, of course, direct all funds to the bright cause of the struggle for democracy ...

The crown of thorns of the “victim of the regime” has already helped Ablyazov once: after all, it was the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Nils Meltzer, who called on France not to extradite him to Russia. There, they say, in prisons they torture and generally feed poorly.

Now the same image should help the ex-banker remove arrests from his accounts - Western countries, in his opinion, can ignore requests from Russia. But here's the problem: Ablyazov is also dreaming of bringing Kazakhstan and even Ukraine to criminal responsibility, to which Europe does not apply any sanctions, and even vice versa. So - hope for "black PR"? Let Ablyazov's troubles be associated not only with the "bloody regime", but also with specific people who need to be shown in the most unattractive light.

There is another scenario that the fugitive banker is probably considering: what if the objects of his “revelations” decide to agree, give some kind of compensation, just to stop the flow of publications, although false, but extremely unpleasant for them? Let not with money, let, for example, close a criminal case in at least one of the countries?

I remember that Boris Berezovsky mastered the techniques of such informational blackmail to perfection. And sometimes he managed to get his way.

But Boris Abramovich ended badly anyway. Perhaps Mukhtar Ablyazov should remember this extremely sad last page of the biography of his “teacher” more often.

Sergey Berdnikov

KYIV. A senior partner of the well-known law firm Ilyashev and Partners told the Ukrainian Business Capital about whether the billions stolen from the Kazakh BTA Bank will replenish the budget of Ukraine.

"DS" - In December 2016, the French State Council canceled the decision to extradite Ablyazov to Russia. What needs to be done to extradite a fraudster to Ukraine?

R.M. - In fact, Ukraine has already taken all the necessary steps. The investigation proved the theft and other crimes committed in Ukraine. The Ukrainian BTA-Bank was recognized as a victim. The Prosecutor General's Office sent materials for extradition to France. There, a decision was made by the Court of Appeal of Lyon, which was confirmed by the decision of the Supreme Court, on the possibility of extraditing Mukhtar Ablyazov to Russia and Ukraine. After the Council of State of France canceled the decree of the Prime Minister of France on the extradition of the ex-banker to the Russian Federation, there are no obstacles to the extradition of Ablyazov into the hands of Ukrainian law enforcement officers. Ukraine should patiently wait for the government decree to extradite Ablyazov to our country.

- Will the unfortunate banker be in Ukraine soon?

Unfortunately, not a fact. When the Prime Minister of France signs the decree on extradition, most likely Ablyazov's lawyers will use the right to appeal against him in the French State Council. But since Ukraine, unlike the Russian Federation, is a state to which there are no claims for the implementation of international law, it seems that the State Council will make a positive decision on the extradition of Ablyazov to our country. But even in this case, Ablyazov has the possibility of challenging the extradition to the European Court of Human Rights. Predicting the time frame is quite problematic, from the extensive experience of Ilyashev & Partners, I think we are talking about two or three years.

- And where is Ablyazov now and what does Ablyazov do?

He was in custody for almost three and a half years, he was released in December. In his own words, he is now in France. In addition to self-promotion, for example, some time after his release, Ablyazov launched a dirty PR campaign against the current owner of BTA, Kazakh businessman Kenes Rakishev. In particular, allegedly hacked correspondence was published on the Internet, in which the names and photographs of girls of model appearance appear, as well as the amounts of payment for sexual services. Ablyazov's team decided not to reinvent the wheel and resorted to using their trademark defense tactic - forging evidence and vilifying everyone around.

- Why slander the current owner of BTA?

R.M. At all trials, Ablyazov's lawyers try to present their client as a victim of political persecution. And in order to create a more complete image of an innocent white sheep in the midst of a pack of wolves, Mukhtar Ablyazov's supporters are trying to create a negative image of BTA leaders who are seeking punishment for a fraudster for stealing from a bank. At the same time, the English authorities put an end to the question "Who is Mr. Ablyazov", in 2014 they canceled the political refugee status granted to the banker, granted to him earlier. Reason: the specified person is a banal fraudster, albeit on a very large scale.

- Whence such confidence that to blackIs Mukhtar Ablyazov involved in PR?

The "corporate style" is visible. First, email is hacked. If there is nothing reprehensible in the correspondence, the "necessary" information is added to the content. After that, already "modified" letters will be made public on the Internet. This approach of the Ablyazov team is already well known to the law enforcement agencies of our country. For example, in 2014, the Goloseevsky District Court of Kyiv recognized the fact of hacking and forging emails of one of the lawyers who represented the interests of BTA. In addition, the investigation established that the services of hackers were ordered and paid for by Ablyazov's son-in-law, Ilyas Khrapunov, who is in Switzerland. The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has already sent an official request for the arrest and extradition of Khrapunov. Thus, there is no doubt that the dirty campaign against the new owner of BTA Kenes Rakishev is the work of Mukhtar Ablyazov.

By the way, even when considering the issue of Ablyazov's extradition from France, the banker's lawyers provided the Court of Appeal of Lyon with a fake certificate from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine about the alleged absence of claims against Ablyazov by Ukrainian law enforcement officers. Then the Prosecutor General personally had to write to France that this was not true, that the episode about Ablyazov’s fraud and embezzlement in Ukraine was fully proven by the investigation, and the alleged letter of the Ministry of Internal Affairs filed with the court was falsified by Ablyazov’s defense.

- If the swindler is on the loose, where is the guarantee that he won't run away again?

The London court that sentenced Ablyazov to 22 months in prison for perjury and forgery ordered him to surrender his passports as well. He handed over his passports, but this did not prevent him from escaping from serving his sentence. In 2013, a banker in France was detained with a fake diplomatic passport of the Central African Republic. That is, now Ablyazov lives in Paris either without documents or with regular fake ones. So there really are no guarantees of a new escape, so one should not exclude such a turn of events. However, his data is still in the databases of Interpol and verification of documents in any country will return him to jail.

- Using free time, the criminal can hide the stolen assets?

This is perhaps a rhetorical question. Mukhtar Ablyazov, using more than 1000 (!) offshore companies, stole and must return $4.3 billion to BTA. This was established by an English court, to which there are no claims anywhere in the world regarding its fairness. It is quite natural that scammers will try to hide the stolen goods, especially since only about $1 billion has been returned through the efforts of our large BTA team, so there is still something to hide. However, such actions are separately qualified by the Criminal Code as legalization. By the way, criminal cases on this new corpus delicti against members of Ablyazov's organized criminal group are already being investigated in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, Lithuania and other countries.

- It turns out that the chances of returning the stolen funds to Ukraine are scanty?

Our state has a chance to return the assets stolen by Ablyazov and his accomplices. However, it is necessary to wait for the extradition of the suspect and the trial. If the judges find Ablyazov guilty under an article that provides for confiscation, the Ukrainian budget will be able to claim the oligarch's assets. Also, MPs could adopt a law on special confiscation.

If we discard all political rhetoric, the law has two positive aspects. Firstly, this law should work as an educational moment, because it will allow punishing those who have committed real crimes, but are safely hiding abroad and are not very worried about what they have done. Also, the law will allow replenishing the country's budget at the expense of confiscated funds.

Why is the law not being passed?

Despite the fact that on the whole the idea of ​​the draft law is correct, certain provisions of the document are indeed "raw" and need to be improved. The process of passing the law is too politicized. It is necessary to convince both parliamentarians and society to give strong arguments in favor of the bill.

- Which?

R.M. First of all, it is worth mentioning that such a practice of seizing illegal assets exists in many states, even in some former post-Soviet republics. For example, at our request, more than one hundred thousand euros were arrested in Latvia, which were kept on the bank account of one of Ablyazov's accomplices in crimes. Latvian law enforcement agencies successfully confiscated the amount to the country's budget without passing a verdict in a criminal case. Although, of course, money for the state should not be a priority goal. After all, the main task is a fair verdict and, if it turns out to be guilty, the punishment of the guilty.