Flaunting Wealth, Flaunting Corruption

One problem with accruing wealth illicitly is that flaunting it draws attention. But why cheat your homeland out of millions if those funds can’t be spent on Dolce & Gabbana outfits for your wife and children? And if you’re wearing Dolce & Gabbana in business class on a FlyDubai flight, how can you resist Instagramming about it?

Uulkan Turgunova, who goes by the name “Amanda,” made just these mistakes.

Journalists, working as part of a collaborative investigation by RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Kyrgyz news outlet Kloop, and Bellingcat, used Turgunova’s social media postings, and those of her Filipino nanny, to gain a glimpse into the lavish lifestyle she lived.

Flaunting wealth isn’t a crime, of course, but getting wealthy via money laundering and abuse of a public office, in most jurisdictions, is.

Turgunova is the wife of the now infamous former deputy customs head of Kyrgyzstan, Raimbek Matraimov. Matraimov, whom Kyrgyz social media began calling “Raim Millionaire” several years ago as a jab at his family’s apparently great wealth, has been the subject of a series of investigative reports that peeled back the layers of exactly how he parlayed his public office into a perch for plundering the Kyrgyz state.

Matraimov began working for the Kyrgyz customs service in 1997, rising through the ranks thereafter. By 2015, he was deputy head of the customs service. His highest official salary, according to a recent investigation, was barely more than $1,000 per month (71,000 Kyrgyz soms), “if his own asset declarations are to be believed,” the report noted.

The average monthly salary in Kyrgyzstan, according to state statistics, was 13,482 Kyrgyz soms in 2015, around $190. Matraimov, officially, was already earning well more than the average Kyrgyz citizen. But even $1,000 per month doesn’t justify the apparent expenditures flaunted by his wife at that time.

Per the recent report: “The cost of the items Turgunova posted [on social media] while Matraimov was working as a public official, and which reporters were able to identify, adds up to more than $400,000. She posted many more that could not be identified.”

Dolce & Gabbana, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel don’t come cheap.

In her husband’s tax documents, which the reporters viewed, no income was declared for Turgunova except for a single declaration of $158,000 from an unknown source in 2016.

Turgunova popped up in the initial batch of investigative reports, which were first revealed in November 2019, mere weeks after the whistleblowing money launderer Aierken Saimaiti (who had begun to feed information to journalists) was assassinated in Istanbul.

The core of the investigation was sussing out how the Abdukadyr family, a secretive Uyghur clan, ran their underground cargo empire smuggling goods made in China into Kyrgyzstan and Eurasia more broadly. Put simply: They did so with help from the Kyrgyz customs service and help like that doesn’t come cheap, either.

Turgunova was revealed, in the initial reports, to be a conduit for Matraimov’s money laundering. In an investigative report released in November 2019, it was revealed that Turgunova – in concert with the Abdukadyr family – invested in a five-story, mixed-use building and also purchased the plot of land on which the building was being constructed, another plot, and an apartment. The report alleged that “Turgunova acquired these properties for a total of at least $12.5 million sometime between 2015 and 2017, according to leaked property data.”

If not her husband, where Turgunova’s wealth comes from is unknown.

The latest report from the investigation focused on an apartment in Dubai apparently owned by the Matraimov family. It is a masterclass in modern open-source investigative techniques.

The hunt began with a video posted in November 2016 on Facebook by a Filipino nanny, Teresita, touring her boss’ new apartment in Dubai. But who was her boss?

In June 2017, Teresita commented below an Instagram post by a Kyrgyz woman named Cholpon Mederova, who the reporters say frequently appears in photos with Turgunova. In the comment, Teresita says she misses her boss “Amanda.” Teresita also shared several photos on Facebook of her and the Matraimov children. There may be other Kyrgyz women who go by the name “Amanda” but additional photos make the connection all the more clear: different images, posted separately by Teresita, Turgunova, and Matraimov on Instagram show Teresita, Turgunova, and one of Matraimov’s sons all in the same gym with distinctive artwork on the wall. In other photos Teresita poses next to a muraled staircase inside the Dubai apartment while in her own posted images Turgunova sits before the same mural with her daughter.

Using an image of Teresita posing by one of the apartment’s windows plus others showing Turgunova in a mirrored elevator room with the 50th floor button pressed, the journalists believe the apartment is the penthouse suite in one of the two Al Fattan Marine Towers in Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach Residence development.

Kyrgyz government officials are required to disclose their assets in income declarations. The journalists viewed Matraimov’s declarations between 2011 and 2017 and no Dubai apartments are included. Of course, maybe the Matraimovs are renting the flat, but that doesn’t explain how they could afford to.

Back in Kyrgyzstan, Matraimov remains relatively untouchable. He was arrested in late October but swiftly released with a promise to repay 2 billion soms (about $24 million) to Kyrgyz state coffers by the end of November. According to local media, he’s made some payments but not the full amount and even the full $24 million pales in comparison to the $700 million he allegedly squirreled out of Kyrgyzstan.