ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- It's no exaggeration to say that if you took all the former and current Kazakh officials whose relatives are known to have owned property in Dubai, you could form a new government with plenty of well-known names.
But how many will have declared or will declare those holdings with officials back home? And with what money were the properties purchased?
These are two questions RFE/RL's Kazakh Service has been asking notables whose wives, children, and siblings appear as Dubai property owners in data held by the U.S.-based nonprofit Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) since 2020.
In some cases, the telephone conversations didn't get further than the word "Dubai."
In others, ex-office holders justified the acquisitions by pointing to their careers before their relatively modestly paid government jobs or their spouses' successes in business.
To be clear, there are a lot of reasons higher-net-worth individuals from Kazakhstan would want to own property in Dubai, and many of them are perfectly legal.
With Kazakhstan 28 places behind the United Arab Emirates in the World Justice Project's Rule of Law rankings, a Palm Jumeirah apartment overlooking the Persian Gulf might be considered a safer investment for a publicly known person than its equivalent in Astana -- and Dubai also has a far more temperate winter than the world's second-coldest capital.
But with 1,550 Kazakh citizens shown by the C4ADS registry as owning more than 2,700 properties worth hundreds of millions of dollars -- and others possibly unknown -- surely the U.A.E. should be a key focus for Kazakh officials who say they are committed to repatriating assets that may have been obtained illegally.
In any case, don't expect to hear too much about it.
Journalists inquiring about the government's work in this direction receive a consistent message: That information is classified.
2022 Turning Points?
Throughout its decades of independence, Kazakh authorities have bemoaned capital flight, offering grace periods for anyone seeking to repatriate wealth of questionable origin and threatening punishments for those who ignore the offer.
The spokesman for this stop-start campaign was usually former President Nursultan Nazarbaev, whose exhortations on the topic were justifiably viewed with cynicism.
After all, of all the families in Kazakhstan, it is unlikely any of them owned more assets abroad than the Nazarbaevs.
But following the bloody unrest in January 2022 that left more than 230 people dead and effectively forced the former president from public life, Nazarbaev successor Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has gone further in the fight against capital flight.
Faced with public pressure for systemic change, his government set up parallel commissions to return illegally obtained assets held at home and abroad later that year.
A law on asset returns entered into force the following year.
The U.A.E.'s role in what C4ADS calls "global patterns of tax avoidance" and money laundering due to the jurisdiction's commitment to financial secrecy needs no explanation.
But there, too, officials are experiencing fresh scrutiny after the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) -- an intergovernmental organization setting global standards to combat money laundering and terrorist financing -- included Dubai on its list of jurisdictions with weak measures to counter money laundering in 2022.
The U.A.E. responded by announcing steps to tighten the real estate buying process, with FATF in February acknowledging "significant progress" and pledging to ease its restrictions.
The scores of properties that featured in Kazakhstan In Dubai, a six-part report by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, belong to some of the spouses and relatives of more than 100 former Kazakh officials, according to the government data.
The Kazakh State Revenue Committee says 40 people serving as government officials declared 60 properties in the U.A.E. registered to themselves and their spouses during the first stage of a universal declaration of assets that began in 2021. Some of the former officials that featured in Kazakhstan In Dubai were still serving at the time.
Starting in January, the latest stage of the universal asset declaration will be introduced, mandating declarations for all citizens and nonresidents living in Kazakhstan.
But the declarations -- even for public persons -- are not currently available to ordinary Kazakhs.
Along with RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, journalists from the independent Vlast.kz news site also worked on the C4ADS cache.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Kazakh Service for the Dubai investigation, Vlast.kz founder Vyacheslav Abramov stressed that he was "very happy" for anyone who had earned their way to property, whether in Dubai, Kazakhstan, or New York.
"The only problem is when they all try to hide it," he said.
"Because [looking through the data] we [journalists] see dozens if not hundreds of names that don't mean anything to us [and it is] very possible they are people we cannot identify because they are drivers, security guards, or low-ranking government staffers in whose names these properties were registered, because [higher-ranking officials] didn't want to register it in their own."
The Elite Of The Elite
The law on asset return that Toqaev signed last year targets individuals worth $100 million or more for potential scrutiny by law enforcement, while anyone with a smaller net worth would only face inquiries under Kazakhstan's current laws.
But even for an oil-rich country like Kazakhstan, $100 million is quite a high bar.
One family that multiple media investigations have suggested is worth far more than $100 million is the family of Nazarbaev, whose relatives and common-law wife appear multiple times in the data provided to RFE/RL's Kazakh Service and other media outlets by C4ADS.
Analysts and independent media have repeatedly noted the lack of pressure the former first family's foreign-held wealth is facing from the Kazakh government.
While authorities have made no mention of foreign-held assets owned by Nazarbaev's three daughters being investigated, one Nazarbaev whose property portfolio they have mentioned in detail is Qairat Satybaldy.
In the fall of 2022, Satybaldy was sentenced to six years in prison for corruption and extortion, becoming the first and only blood relative of the former head of state to serve time in the aftermath of the Bloody January violence that year that coincided with a power struggle within the government.
Despite this, the businessman and former national security Major General Satybaldy was released from jail in September and is now serving a probation-like sentence.
Part of the justification for his early release were the illegally acquired assets worth more than $1.5 billion that the government says he has returned to the state.
But the properties the government mentioned in that handover did not include at least seven apartments worth more than $4 million in the SHAMS-4 residential complex near the Dubai marina.
Names that the properties were registered to as of 2022 included Saida Qanatbekqyzy, Asel Baqtiyarqyzy, Satybaldy's mother, Svetlana Nazarbaeva, and a series of young people with the surnames Qairatqyzy (literally, daughter of Qairat) and Qairatuly (son of Qairat).
Kazakh media have described both Qanatbekqyzy and Baqtiyarqyzy as common-law wives of Satybaldy.
Correspondents of RFE/RL's Kazakh Service were able to knock on the doors of two of the SHAMS-4 apartments, but nobody answered.
In August, Kazakh authorities said "two villas in the U.A.E." valued at around $40 million were in the final stage of being handed over to the state.
RFE/RL's Kazakh Service did not find the villas in the C4ADS data. And the SHAMS-4 apartments have not been mentioned in any official government communications.
Spouses And Their Business Success
Many of the people who appear in the data set are the spouses of political figures who have spent the vast majority of their career in government service, where official salaries are modest.
While that does not mean their foreign property portfolios were acquired with illegal income, it raises questions about exactly how and when the families acquired the money needed to buy those properties.
Nurlan Nigmatullin, a former parliament speaker, chief of staff, and provincial governor, spent only a few years working in the private sector during a political career that spanned three decades.
Given that his last post ended in 2022 -- just weeks after the turmoil that led to a purge of Nazarbaev's top allies -- Nigmatullin might well have filled in a declaration of his assets.
But because these declarations are a secret, it is unclear whether any of the 50 properties registered in the C4ADS data as being owned or co-owned by Nigmatullin's wife, Venera Baimurzaeva, appear on it.
While RFE/RL's Kazakh Service was able to reach Baimurzaeva, she hung up the phone shortly after answering.
In Kazakhstan, Baimurzaeva's name appears on the articles of incorporation of a number of companies, the largest of which is involved in real estate.
It is a similar story for Elizaveta Ermukhanova, the wife of Mirlan Mukhambetov, whose most recent posting was as the point man for Kazakhstan's anti-corruption service in the western province of Aqtobe in 2020.
According to the data, Ermukhanova owns five apartments in the Safeer Tower 2 residential complex in Dubai, with a combined approximate value of just under $1 million.
In Kazakhstan, Ermukhanova has businesses that own, build, and rent out properties.
Ermukhanova's husband began his nearly 30-year career in government service with a post as a customs inspector.
The Mukhambetovs did not respond to RFE/RL's request for comment.
Maksut Nurimanov, who served as deputy chairman of the National Security Committee from 2001 to 2010, credited his wife's business acumen for the purchase of their apartment adjacent to the Dubai Marina Yacht Club that is worth an estimated $750,000.
"She bought it with honestly earned income, having paid all the taxes that bribe takers in our country don't pay," Nurimanov told RFE/RL.
The most notable company registered in Kazakhstan under the name of his wife, Zhibek Nurimanova, is the tourism company Aspan Line. Its zero tax declarations from recent years suggest the company is inactive.
Career military man Nurimanov told RFE/RL in a written reply that his wife is currently seriously ill and reiterated he had documents confirming the legality of the funds used to purchase the property.
Nurimanov did not attach copies of the documents or state when the property was purchased.
Responding to questions from journalists in the parliament about C4ADS data on Kazakh Dubai property holders earlier this month, Deputy Prosecutor-General Ghalymzhan Qoigeldiev said Kazakh officials are working with their U.A.E. counterparts on a number of cases but results can "sometimes take years."
"I will tell you one thing: Those people who left the country are trying to steal their millions. They will be constantly wanted," said Qoigeldiev during an October 2 appearance in parliament, reminding journalists that access to the list of individuals suspected of holding illegal assets abroad is "restricted."
Written by Chris Rickleton based on reporting by Manas Qaiyrtaiuly
