Raimbek Matraimov, the former deputy chief of Kyrgyzstan's Customs Service who was at the center of a high-profile corruption scandal, has been transferred from pretrial detention to house arrest. The Birinchi Mai district court in Bishkek said on November 13 that the move was made two days earlier. Matraimov and three of his brothers -- Tilek, Ruslan, and Islambek -- were extradited to Kyrgyzstan in March from Azerbaijan, where they were in hiding. Raimbek, the most notorious of the brothers, was charged with money laundering and the abduction and illegal incarceration of unnamed individuals as part of the 2020-21 corruption scandal. In 2019, an investigation by RFE/RL, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and Kloop implicated Matraimov in a corruption scheme involving the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, click here.
