THE KAZAKHS ARE ON THE HUNT

Rajika Jayatilake asserts that the fight against corruption is effective only if a country’s leadership is committed

Transparency International (TI) recently discussed the “dysfunctional rule of law, rising authoritarianism and systemic corruption” in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Within this setup, Kazakhstan in Central Asia is making a concerted effort to fight corruption and recover looted wealth.

According to local authorities, the country’s public policy is prioritising the fight against corruption with a five year anticorruption strategy. An anticorruption agency has been established to enforce new anticorruption laws that target corrupt individuals, and digitalised public services have been created to minimise human contact and reduce the opportunity for corrupt behaviour.

TI’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) shows that Kazakhstan is the 93rd least corrupt nation out of 180 nations surveyed. From 1999 until 2023, its corruption rank averaged 111.6; it recorded its lowest (65) in 2000 before peaking at 150 in 2007.

For years, the country’s wealth was accumulating in the hands of a few. Recently, KPMG reported that 50 Kazakhs owned 42 percent of the country’s wealth.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) says that corruption and stark inequalities have plagued Kazakhstan since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Nursultan Nazarbayev was one of the longest ruling non-royal leaders in the world and he ruled Kazakhstan for about 30 years. He was the only president that independent Kazakhstan knew until 2019.

In the 1980s, Nazarbayev became a Communist Party official under the Soviet Union and was appointed President of Kazakhstan shortly before its collapse. At the 1991 presidential election, he secured almost 100 percent of the vote.

During his presidency however, the people of Kazakhstan benefitted very little from their country’s vast mineral wealth. Only a circle of billionaires, as well as Nazarbayev’s family and officials close to him, could fill their pockets with the country’s riches.

An OCCRP investigation in January 2022 found that Nazarbayev had at least US$ 8 billion in assets under an umbrella of charitable foundations set up and controlled by him.

Moreover, his personal secretary in the 1980s Vladimir Ni cashed in on Kazakhstan’s transition to a market economy by acquiring stateowned mining companies at bargain prices and selling stakes in them to foreign investors such as Samsung. This earned him enormous profits, which he moved to bank accounts in the West by using shell companies and anonymous trusts.

Ni died in 2001 but his protégé Vladimir Kim took over the venture and became the wealthiest man in Kaza­khstan in 2021.

British think tank Chatham House found that Kazakhstan’s ruling class owns over 530 million dollars in exclusive London properties while investigative journalists at Radio Free Europe have discovered that the Nazarbayev family alone owns over US$ 700 million in luxury real estate in countries such as Switzerland and the US.

An investigation into the Panama Papers leaks in 2017 uncovered a high-class group of Kazakh billionaires who had wealth stored in an offshore company in the tax haven of Bermuda.

Subsequently, in response to civil protests, Nazarbayev resigned from the presidency on 19 March 2019 and handed power over to seasoned politician and one-time prime minister Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

Nevertheless, Nazarbayev still controlled power from behind the scenes through the security council.

When the Kazakh people began protesting against rising oil prices in January 2022 and Nazarbayev’s ongoing political presence, Tokayev distanced himself from the latter and promised change.

Transparency International observes: “The wealth that the country’s political elite allegedly amassed through corruption was a particular concern during protests.”

When OCCRP investigated accounts with the Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse in February 2022, it discovered that the Tokayev family was no less corrupt, and had been accumulating wealth valued at over US$ 13 million in anonymous offshore accounts and real estate since 1998.

Since 2022 nevertheless, Kazakhstan’s anticorruption efforts have resulted in the recovery of nearly 1.8 billion dollars of stolen assets.

Chairman of the Anti-Corruption Agency Askhat Zhumagali reveals that nearly 1,500 corruption cases were registered in Kazakhstan in 2023 and that over 1,100 individuals were exposed. Of these, 158 were managers at various levels. In addition, more than 1,000 cases had been subjected to legal proceedings and in excess of US$ 605 million received as damages.

He notes that the government’s efforts to prevent corruption include implementing the Corruption Risk Map, which focusses on monitoring the construction of social facilities with delivery deadline violations and theft risks. A total of 156 such facilities were identified across the country.

This agency also launched an anticorruption volunteering project to engage civil society in the fight against corruption. Over 2,000 concerned citizens participated in the project.

As Victoria Woodhull – the first woman to run for president in the US in 1872 – once said, “it is not great wealth in a few individuals that proves a country is prosperous but great general wealth evenly distributed among the people.”

It is not great wealth in a few individuals that proves a country is prosperous but great general wealth evenly distributed among the people

Victoria Woodhull
The first woman to run for president of the US