Nazarbayev’s Grandson at Center of British Unexplained Wealth Case

In May 2019, the UK’s National Crime Agency issued its second batch of Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs) against three properties worth more than 80 million pounds. Last month, it was revealed that one of the properties, owned through offshore companies, is the home of Nurali Aliyev – the grandson of former president and forever First President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev.

In 2017, UWOs were introduced in the UK in an effort to combat corruption and financial crime carried out by foreigners buying up lucrative and luxurious property, often via opaque offshore companies, with dirty money. Investigators from the National Crime Agency (NCA) can use Unexplained Wealth Orders to require owners, simply put, to explain the source of their wealth. As the BBC phrases it, “If [the investigators] do not agree with the explanation, they can then ask the courts to confiscate [the property].”

On March 10, 2020, Nurali Aliyev and his mother, Dariga Nazarbayeva, were named in London’s High Court as the beneficial owners of the three properties targeted by the UWOs.

The three properties, identified in an investigation by the BBC, Finance Uncovered, and Transparency International into the ownership of London property by members of Kazakhstan's political elite, include “a mega apartment in a luxury secure development” in Chelsea, a secure mansion in Highgate on a private cul-de-sac overlooking an exclusive golf club, and a 10-bedroom, high-security mansion on Bishops Avenue, one of Britain’s most expensive streets. The Bishops Avenue home reportedly has an underground pool, a glass domed roof, a cinema, and separate staff quarters.

The three properties, as noted above, are technically owned by offshore companies. The companies are incorporated in Panama, Anguilla, and Curacao, jurisdictions that exploit mansion-sized loopholes in Western financial regulations in order to shield the true owners of various assets.

The NCA suspects, according to a statement from an investigator in court documents referenced by the BBC, that Rakhat Aliyev, Nurali’s father, “has been involved in... bribery, corruption, blackmail, conspiracy to defraud, forgery and money laundering.”

Rakhat Aliyev is a figure worth examining in detail. First things first, he is dead; in February 2015 Aliyev was found hung inside his solitary prison cell in Vienna, Austria. Officially, Aliyev – who had fallen fast and hard out of favor in Kazakhstan in the preceding years – committed suicide. For many, the death was deeply suspicious, not the least because of his connections to Kazakhstan’s ruling family.

Aliyev, until 2007, had been married to Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, Dariga. Before his fall, he held a series of important government posts, from being chief of Kazakhstan's tax police to a deputy chief of the state security service. He was appointed ambassador to Austria in February 2007 but mere months after taking up the post, in late May that year, he was relieved and a warrant issued for his arrest on kidnapping charges in Kazakhstan.

Aliyev alleged that the charges – and those pertaining to torture, murder, and treason that followed – were politically motivated. He claimed that the persecution was triggered when he told Nazarbayev, his father-in-law, that he was planning to run for president in 2012. At the time he would have told the president that, Nazarbayev was technically out of remaining constitutional terms.

But the Kazakh Constitution was amended in May 2007. Among the amendments, the presidential term was shortened from seven to five years, to take effect in 2012. Shortly after, an additional amendment was passed allowing the First President an unlimited number of five-year terms.

None of this is to say Aliyev wasn’t corrupt. His accrual of property certainly raises suspicions which have dogged his family even after his death, despite their efforts to distance themselves from Aliyev.

The NCA investigator referenced by the BBC also commented in court documents that they believed “members of [Rakhat Aliyev’s] family – including Nurali Aliyev – have been involved in money laundering."

Unsurprisingly, the Nazarbayev family has pushed back against all allegations of ill-gotten wealth. A lawyer for some of the companies that own the properties even went so far as to obliquely accused the NCA of sexism. As the BBC reported, Clare Montgomery QC accused the NCA of “an absurdly patriarchal view of the world.”

She argued, “There is a woman who is economically active throughout the period who might just have conceivably earned her own money."

Dariga Nazarbayeva is at present the chair of the Kazakh Senate, making her second in line to the presidency behind incumbent President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. She entered the Kazakh legislature, the Mazhilis, in 2004 and once worked as head of the official state-run news agency, Khabar.

Nazarbayeva has denied that her former husband’s money, ill-gotten or otherwise, has anything to do with the properties in question. Nurali Aliyev has made similar denials. Nurali’s lawyers told Eurasianet, “He is now challenging the NCA’s approach and will robustly defend the proceedings. He is looking forward to this matter being concluded swiftly in court.”

A swift court conclusion seems unlikely.

For reference, the first case surrounding the first UWOs in the UK is still ongoing. The UK’s first UWOs were levied against Zamira Hajiyeva, the wife of Jahangir Hajiyev, the former chairman of the International Bank of Azerbaijan, in 2018. In February 2020, Hajiyeva lost her appeal against the NCA, in no small part because her husband was jailed for fraud in Azerbaijan in 2016 and the authorities are convinced she’s the perfect target for an UWO. The BBC reported in February that the next steps could take a year to unfold as Hajiyeva has the opportunity to provide evidence to explain her wealth. If she cannot do so, NCA investigators can return to court and “ask another judge to make a separate order to seize the property.”

Arguably, the British justice system still has to prove it has the mettle to actually confiscate property that was purchased with ill-gotten gains. If it can do that, there’s more than one Kazakh elite-owned mansion that should be in the crosshairs of diligent corruption investigators.