For most Britons, Kazakhstan is known primarily through the movie “Borat” and the elite real estate in London and throughout England, which Kazakh oligarchs have bought for billions of petro-pounds. For the ordinary citizens of this vast and sparsely populated country, Kazakhstan is primarily associated with poverty and constant corruption scandals. In these scandals and poverty, the blame was previously placed on the first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose grandson lived and studied in Britain for a long time.
Not long ago, President Nazarbayev retired, and Kassym-Jomart Tokayev succeeded him. Many experts hoped that it would be Kassym-Jomart Tokayev who would lead the country in a civilized direction. He promised to distance himself from Putin’s Russia and move closer to Europe. Also, the new President Tokayev was expected to bring reforms and fight corruption. Small and medium-sized businesses hoped that Kassym-Jomart Tokayev would help Kazakhstanis conduct business without constant bribes and bureaucratic tricks.
Over the years of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s presidency, he has disappointed almost his entire electorate. Tokayev’s reforms exist only on paper, and the fight against corruption remains a mere slogan. The standard of living in Kazakhstan has not only failed to rise, the average wage in pounds has fallen, while prices in pound equivalents are rising. Inflation in Kazakhstan is higher than in the UK.
On one hand, it can be said that it is difficult for Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to transform the country in just a couple of years after decades of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s rule. On the other hand, the new regime has changed the faces of those who are getting rich, but the system remains the same: the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Moreover, there is almost no middle class in Kazakhstan. The main problem facing the country now is the threat of secondary sanctions for assisting Russia in circumventing primary sanctions.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Timur Turlov are helping Russia bypass sanctions. As noted by Talgat Baytaziev, a businessman who migrated many years ago, over the past year and a half, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has helped Putin transfer more than 8 billion dollars through Kazakhstan. The main beneficiaries of this process are Timur Turlov and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev himself.
According to Talgat Baytaziev, a company with a questionable reputation, Freedom Finance, which changed its Russian registration to a Kazakh one, has become a laundry for Russian blood money. The head of Ukraine’s Financial Monitoring, Igor Cherkassky, holds a similar opinion. In response to Talk Finance’s question,
“In your opinion, how much money has Putin’s regime funneled through Freedom Holding, Freedom Finance, and less-known firms associated with Timur Turlov?” Igor Cherkaskyi answered: “Tracking the full sums has not been possible yet. But according to our preliminary estimates and assessments from colleagues in the EU and the US, we are talking about six billion US dollars”.
Considering that Talgat Baytaziev mentions the amount of illegal transfers as 8 billion, it can be concluded that the figure could reach 10 billion dollars.
It is impossible to say for certain how closely connected Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Timur Turlov are. It is also difficult to determine how much President of Kazakhstan and one of the most unconventional financiers of the country, Turlov, earn from assisting Putin. However, one can confidently agree with the opinion of Talgat Baytaziev.
The businessman reminds us that in the last years of his rule, Nursultan Nazarbayev distanced himself from Russia and even decided to change the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet. In contrast, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, in relation to Nazarbayev, brought Kazakhstan into a military alliance with the Russian Federation (CSTO) and accepted over 450,000 migrants from Russia. And while former Russian citizen Timur Turlov does not hide his sympathy for Putin, Tokayev tries to pretend that Kazakhstan is moving towards democracy, not a totalitarian regime.
Another significant aspect of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s rule is the pressure on businesses. New oligarchs like Turlov are not only taking over financial markets from the old ones but also media assets. At the same time, active pressure and extortion have become the scourge of the old oligarchy. For example, Kairat Boranbayev, Timur Kulibayev, Aliya Nazarbayeva, and Vyacheslav Kim are all experiencing problems with Tokayev.
