ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Prosecutors on August 22 asked the Specialized Inter-District Court in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, to sentence the imprisoned former wife of a convicted nephew of the Central Asian nation's former authoritarian president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, to 12 years in prison on charges that include the illegal deprivation of liberty and extortion.
Investigators say Gulmira Satybaldy, with the assistance of her driver, forcibly held her former business partner and relative Abai Zhunusov in isolation against his will for 165 days in 2019 to force him to give up his stakes in several businesses.
Satybaldy is concurrently serving two sentences -- eight years for embezzlement and the illegal appropriation of shares and assets of several enterprises, and seven years for abduction and actions aiding the commission of a crime.
The sentences were handed down by a court in May and June last year.
Prosecutors are now asking the court to rule that the new 12-year sentence they are seeking for the defendant be served partially concurrently, meaning that the total time to be spent in prison by Satybaldy would be 13 years.
Gulmira Satybaldy was arrested along with her ex-husband Qairat Satybaldy in March 2022. He was tried separately in September 2023 and sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of fraud and embezzlement.
Last week, a court in Kazakhstan's eastern city of Oskemen replaced Qairat Satybaldy's six-year prison sentence with a suspended sentence.
Court No. 2 in the capital of the East Kazakhstan region ruled on August 16 that Qairat Satybaldy must be released with a suspended 40-month sentence, stressing that the once extremely powerful businessman and politician had returned all the money he was accused of embezzling to the State Treasury.
The probes launched against the couple were part of a series of investigations targeting relatives and allies of Nazarbaev following unprecedented anti-government protests that turned into deadly mass disorders in early January 2022.
After the deadly events, 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.