Convicted Felon Related To Former Kazakh President Retakes Paralympic Committee

Qairat Boranbaev (file photo)

Kazakh tycoon Qairat Boranbaev, whose daughter is a widow of a grandson of former President Nursultan Nazarbaev, has retaken the post of the president of the Central Asian nation's Paralympics Committee after being release from prison in November.

Boranbaev wrote on Instagram over the weekend that he is "grateful to everyone who supported me."

Last week, the deputy chief of the Financial Monitoring Agency, Zhenis Elemesov, said a criminal case against Boranbaev had not been closed yet and Nazarbayev's former in-law is suspected of tax evasion and embezzlement.

Elemesov added that Boranbaev paid 134.5 billion tenges ($300 million) to the State Treasury to compensate for the damages caused by his crimes.

According to Elemesov, Boranbaev may be requested to pay more in compensation but would not require being incarcerated.

Boranbaev was granted an early release from prison in early November last year after being sentenced several months earlier by a court in Astana to six years in prison after a retrial procedure.

That came after Boranbaev and his two co-defenders were sentenced to eight years in prison each on embezzlement charges -- which the trio rejected at the time -- in March 2023.

The sentences, however, were canceled in June by a court in Astana with the judge citing the absence of key documents that the charges against the three men were based on.

Boranbaev subsequently changed his plea during a new hearing into the case and accepted that he embezzled 14.6 billion tenges (more than $32 million), which he returned to the State Treasury.

Boranbaev's daughter, Alima Boranbaeva, and Nazarbaev's grandson, Aisultan Nazarbaev, married in 2013.

In September 2020, Aisultan Nazarbaev, who reportedly suffered from a drug addiction and had run-ins with the law in the United Kingdom, died in London at the age of 29.

Boranbaev, 57, was arrested following unprecedented antigovernment protests in early January 2022 after which the Kazakh regime began to quietly target Nazarbaev, his family, and other allies -- many of whom held powerful or influential posts in government, security agencies, and profitable energy companies.